One of the best-known figures of British history, collective memory of Henry VIII presents us with the image of a corpulent, covetous, and cunning king whose appetite for worldly goods met few parallels, whose wives met infamously premature ends, and whose religion was ever political in intent. 1536 - focusing on a pivotal year in the life of the King - reveals a fuller portrait of this complex monarch, detailing the finer shades of humanity that have so long been overlooked. We discover that in 1536 Henry met many failures - physical, personal, and political - and emerged from them a revolutionary new king who proceeded to transform a nation and reform a religion. A compelling story, the effects of which are still with us today, 1536 shows what a profound difference can be made merely by changing the heart of a king.

The Inquisition! Just the word itself evokes, to the modern reader, endless images of torment, violence, corruption, and intolerance committed in the name of Catholic orthodoxy and societal conformity. But what do most people actually know about the Inquisition, its ministers, its procedures? This systematic, comprehensive look at one of the most important Inquisition tribunals in the New World reveals a surprisingly diverse panorama of actors, events, and ideas that came into contact and conflict in the central arena of religious faith. Edited and annotated by John F. Chuchiak IV, this collection of previously untranslated and unpublished documents from the Holy Office of the Inquisition in New Spain provides a clear understanding of how the Inquisition originated, evolved, and functioned in the colonial Spanish territories of Mexico and northern Central America. The three sections of documents lay out the laws and regulations of the Inquisition, follow examples of its day-to-day operations and procedures, and detail select trial proceedings. Chuchiak’s opening chapter and brief section introductions provide the social, historical, political, and religious background necessary to comprehend the complex and generally misunderstood institutions of the Inquisition and the effect it has had on societal development in modern-day Mexico, Guatemala, El Salvador, Nicaragua, and Honduras. Featuring fifty-eight newly translated documents, meticulous annotations, and trenchant contextual analysis, this documentary history is an indispensable resource for anyone seeking to understand the Inquisition in general and its nearly three-hundred-year reign in the New World in particular.

This volume recreates through a register and apt citation the first thousand acts of an archive known informally as the 'Notai ebrei', a collection of as many as 10,000 such acts drawn by Roman rabbis between 1536 and 1640. The acts in this volume cover the twenty years prior to the establishment of the Roman ghetto by Paul IV in 1555. A lengthy introduction reveals these acts as a mirror of Jewish social and cultural life, including such matters as litigations, broken engagements, adoption, synagogal disputes, as well as rentals contracts, and apprenticeships. Most noteworthy is the ownership of property by women. This encouraged and reflected the treatment of both men and women as individuals. Indeed, individualism, which also promoted the amalgamation and ethnic levelling of a society that after about 1500 was notably one of immigrants, was this society's most salient characteristic.

This study examines the ethical character of John Calvin and his Genevan colleagues' evangelizing of France. It reveals that Calvin's plans for proselytizing his homeland involved lying, deception, and obfuscation which were employed as a means of evading detection by the French authorities. Balserak considers important questions about the relationship between godliness and cunning, about Calvin's manufacturing of his image, and about the lengths to which he and his colleagues went to spread their gospel.

The growth in England and Britain’s merchant marine from the medieval period onwards meant that an increasing number of criminal offences were committed on or against the country’s vessels while they were at sea. Between 1536 and 1834, such crimes were determined at the Admiralty Sessions if brought to trial. This was a special part of the wider Admiralty Court, which, unlike the other forums in that tribunal, used English common law procedure rather than Roman civil law to try its cases. To a modest extent, this produced a ‘hybrid’ court, dominated by the common law but influenced by aspects of Europe’s other major legal tradition. The Admiralty Sessions also had their own (highly singular) regime for executing convicts, used the Marshalsea prison to hold their suspects and displayed the Admiralty Court’s ceremonial silver oar at their hearings and hangings. During the near three centuries of its existence, the Admiralty Sessions faced enormous legal and logistical problems. The crimes they tried might occur thousands of miles and months of sailing time away from England. Assembling evidence that would ‘stand up’ in front of a jury was a constant challenge, not least because of the peripatetic lives of the seafarers who provided most of their witnesses. The forum’s relationship with terrestrial criminal courts in England was often difficult and the demarcation between their respective jurisdictions was complicated and subject to change. Despite all of these problems, the court experienced significant successes, as well as notable failures, in its battle to deal with a litany of serious maritime crimes, ranging from piracy to murder at sea. It also spawned a series of Vice-Admiralty Courts in English and British colonies around the world. This book documents the origins, development and abolition of the Admiralty Sessions. It discusses all of the major crimes that were determined by the forum, and examines some of the more arcane and unusual offences that ended up there. Some of the unusual challenges presented by the maritime environment, whether the impossibility of preserving dead bodies at sea, the extensive power given to captains to physically punish sailors, the difficulty of securing suspects in small vessels, or the often gruesome problems occasioned by the marginal legal status of slaves, are also considered in detail.

This standard specifies the terms and definitions, classification, quality requirements, inspection methods and rules, labeling, packaging, storage and transportation requirements of rapeseed oil. This standard applies to the finished pressing rapeseed oil, finished solvent extraction rapeseed oil, crude rapeseed oil. The quality index of crude rapeseed oil is only applicable to the trade of crude rapeseed oil.

Religious warfare has been a recurrent feature of European history. In this intelligent and readable study, the distinguished Crusade historian Norman Housley describes and analyses the principal expressions of holy war in the period from the Hussite wars to the first generation of the Reformation. The context was one of both challenge and expansion. The Ottoman Turks posed an unprecedented external threat to the 'Christian republic', while doctrinal dissent, constant warfare between states, and rebellion eroded it from within. Professor Housley shows how in these circumstances the propensity to sanctify warfare took radically different forms. At times warfare between national communities was shaped by convictions of 'sacred patriotism', either in defending God-given native land or in the pursuit of messianic programmes abroad. Insurrectionary activity, especially when driven by apocalyptic expectations, was a second important type of religious war. In the 1420s and early 1430s the Hussites waged war successfully in defence of what they believed to be 'God's Law'. And some frontier communities depicted their struggle against non-believers as religious war by reference to crusading ideas and habits of thought. Professor Housley pinpoints what these conflicts had in common in the ways the combatants perceived their own role, their demonization of their opponents, and the ongoing critique of religious war in all its forms. This is a major contribution to both Crusade history and the study of the Wars of Religion of the early modern period. Professor Housley explores the interaction between Crusade and religious war in the broader sense, and argues that the religious violence of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries was organic, in the sense that it sprang from deeply rooted proclivities within European society.

This document specifies the terms and definitions, classification, quality requirements, inspection methods and rules, labeling, packaging, storage, transportation, and sales of rapeseed oil. This document applies to finished rapeseed oil and crude rapeseed oil. The quality indicators for crude rapeseed oil are only applicable to the trade of crude rapeseed oil. This document does not apply to high-oleic rapeseed oil.

The public and political lives of the fifteenth- and early sixteenth-century gentry have been extensively studied, but comparatively little is known of their private lives and beliefs. Humphrey Newton of Pownall, Cheshire, offers a rare and fascinating opportunity to redress the balance, thanks to the fortunate survival of a commonplace book he compiled c.1498-1524. Drawing upon this unique manuscript, this interdisciplinary and multi-dimensional study of Newton explores his family life, landed estate, legal work, piety, and his literary skills [he composed nearly twenty courtly love lyrics]. It charts his social advancement and the self-fashioning of his gentle image, while placing him in the context of current discussions of gentry culture. What makes Newton even more noteworthy is that he was among the unsung and little known stratum of English society historians have labelled the 'lesser' gentry. As such, this book provides the first comprehensive biography of an early Tudor gentleman. Dr DEBORAH YOUNGS is lecturer in medieval history at Swansea University.