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Throughout the many political and social upheavals of the early modern era, names were words to conjure by, articulating significant historical trends and helping individuals and societies make sense of often dramatic periods of change. Centered on onomastics—the study of names—in the German-speaking lands, this volume, gathering leading scholars across multiple disciplines, explores the dynamics and impact of naming (and renaming) processes in a variety of contexts—social, artistic, literary, theological, and scientific—in order to enhance our understanding of individual and collective experiences.
“The book offers unique insights into complex cultural processes, reframing some supposedly well-known areas of German history. Its wide topical scope allows it to explore a remarkable variety of naming processes in the early modern period.” • Johannes Dillinger, Oxford Brookes University
“These engaging and highly polished essays together speak to broader ways in which knowledge, political and religious movements, and other social arrangements came to define the history of early modern Europe.” • Philip M. Soergel, University of Maryland
List of Figures and Tables
Notes on Text
Introduction: The Dynamics of Early Modern Naming
Joel F. Harrington
PART I: NAMING THE PAST
Chapter 1. Picards, Karlstadtians, and Oecolampadians: (Re)Naming the Early Eucharistic Controversy
Amy Nelson Burnett
Chapter 2. From the Council to the Founding Myth: How the Spirit of Trent Came to be Named
Birgit Emich
Chapter 3. Triplets: The Holy Roman Empire's Birthing of Catholics, Lutherans, and Reformed in 1648
David Mayes
PART II: NAMING AND ORGANIZING KNOWLEDGE
Chapter 4. Naming and Singing the Psalter in Counter-Reformation Germany
Alexander J. Fisher
Chapter 5. Naming the Ambiguous: Income and Royal Service in the Seventeenth Century
Heiko Droste
Chapter 6. The Mystery of the St. Sebastian Lazareth: Mapping Place-Names and Contagious Disease Hospitals in Sixteenth-Century Nuremberg
Amy Newhouse
Chapter 7. Global Goods in Local Languages: Naming Cotton Textiles in the Swiss Cantons
John Jordan and Gabi Schopf
PART III: NAMING THE OTHER
Chapter 8. Naming the Turk and the Moor: Prehistories of Race
Carina L. Johnson
Chapter 9. Denouncing the Spendthrift: Debating Social Identity in the Court of Law and Public Opinion
Ashley L. Elrod
Chapter 10. Confessionisten, Calvinisten, Tibben: Nomenclatures of Legal Exclusion in Northwestern Germany, 1535–1650
David M. Luebke
Afterword: Names All the Way Down: Naming Practices in Early Modern Germany and Early Modern Historiography
Randolph C. Head
Index