This is the first full-scale study of interactions between Italy's religious reform and English reformations, which were notoriously liable to pick up other people's ideas. The book is of fundamental importance for those whose work includes revisionist themes of ambiguity, opportunism and interdependence in sixteenth century religious change. Anne Overell adopts an inclusive approach, retaining within the group of Italian reformers those spirituali who left the church and those who remained within it, and exploring commitment to reform, whether 'humanist', 'protestant' or 'catholic'. In 1547, when the internationalist Archbishop Thomas Cranmer invited foreigners to foster a bolder reformation, the Italians Peter Martyr Vermigli and Bernardino Ochino were the first to arrive in England. The generosity with which they were received caused comment all over Europe: handsome travel expenses, prestigious jobs, congregations which included the great and the good. This was an entry con brio, but the book also casts new light on our understanding of Marian reformation, led by Cardinal Reginald Pole, English by birth but once prominent among Italy's spirituali. When Pole arrived to take his native country back to papal allegiance, he brought with him like-minded men and Italian reform continued to be woven into English history. As the tables turned again at the accession of Elizabeth I, there was further clamour to 'bring back Italians'. Yet Elizabethans had grown cautious and the book's later chapters analyse the reasons why, offering scholars a new perspective on tensions between national and international reformations. Exploring a nexus of contacts in England and in Italy, Anne Overell presents an intriguing connection, sealed by the sufferings of exile and always tempered by political constraints. Here, for the first time, Italian reform is shown as an enduring part of the Elect Nation's literature and myth.

Juan de Valdés played a pivotal role in the febrile atmosphere of sixteenth-century Italian religious debate. Fleeing his native Spain after the publication in 1529 of a book condemned by the Spanish Inquisition, he settled in Rome as a political agent of the emperor Charles V and then in Naples, where he was at the centre of a remarkable circle of literary and spiritual men and women involved in the religious crisis of those years, including Peter Martyr Vermigli, Marcantonio Flaminio, Bernardino Ochino and Giulia Gonzaga. Although his death in 1541 marked the end of this group, Valdés’ writings were to have a decisive role in the following two decades, when they were sponsored and diffused by important cardinals such as Reginald Pole and Giovanni Morone, both papal legates to the Council of Trent. The most famous book of the Italian Reformation, the Beneficio di Cristo, translated in many European languages, was based on Valdés’ thought, and the Roman Inquisition was very soon convinced that he had ’infected the whole of Italy’. In this book Massimo Firpo traces the origins of Valdés’ religious experience in Erasmian Spain and in the movement of the alumbrados, and underlines the large influence of his teachings after his death all over Italy and beyond. In so doing he reveals the originality of the Italian Reformation and its influence in the radicalism of many religious exiles in Switzerland and Eastern Europe, with their anti-Trinitarians and finally Socinian outcomes. Based upon two extended essays originally published in Italian, this book provides a full up-dated and revised English translation that outlines a new perspective of the Italian religious history in the years of the Council of Trent, from the Sack of Rome to the triumph of the Roman Inquisition, reconstructing and rethinking it not only as a failed expansion of the Protestant Reformation, but as having its own peculiar originality. As such it will be welcomed by all scholars wishin

The aim of this Companion volume is to provide scholars and advanced graduate students with a comprehensive and authoritative state-of-the-art review of current research work on Anglo-Italian Renaissance studies. Written by a team of international scholars and experts in the field, the chapters are grouped into two large areas of influence and intertextuality, corresponding to the dual way in which early modern England looked upon the Italian world from the English perspective – Part 1: "Italian literature and culture" and Part 2: "Appropriations and ideologies". In the first part, prominent Italian authors, artists, and thinkers are examined as a direct source of inspiration, imitation, and divergence. The variegated English response to the cultural, ideological, and political implications of pervasive Italian intertextuality, in interrelated aspects of artistic and generic production, is dealt with in the second part. Constructed on the basis of a largely interdisciplinary approach, the volume offers an in-depth and wide-ranging treatment of the multifaceted ways in which Italy’s material world and its iconologies are represented, appropriated, and exploited in the literary and cultural domain of early modern England. For this reason, contributors were asked to write essays that not only reflect current thinking but also point to directions for future research and scholarship, while a purposefully conceived bibliography of primary and secondary sources and a detailed index round off the volume.

This volume brings together 29 new essays by leading international scholars, to provide an inclusive overview of recent work in Reformation history. Presents Catholic Renewal as a continuum of the Protestant Reformation. Examines Reformation in Eastern and Western Europe, Asia and the Americas. Takes a broad, inclusive approach – covering both traditional topics and cutting-edge areas of debate.

Italian sermons tell a story of the Reformation that credits preachers with using the pulpit, pen, and printing press to keep Italy Catholic when the region’s violent religious wars made the future uncertain, and with fashioning a post-Reformation Catholicism that would survive the competition and religious choice of their own time and ours.

Continuing the tradition of historiographic studies, this volume provides an update on research in Reformation and early modern Europe. Written by expert scholars in the field, these eighteen essays explore the fundamental points of Reformation and early modern history in religious studies, European regional studies, and social and cultural studies. Authors review the present state of research in the field, new trends, key issues scholars are working with, and fundamental works in their subject area, including the wide range of electronic resources now available to researchers. Reformation and Early Modern Europe: A Guide to Research is a valuable resource for students and scholars of early modern Europe.

A Worlde of Wordes, the first-ever comprehensive Italian-English dictionary, was published in 1598 by John Florio. One of the most prominent linguists and educators in Elizabethan England, Florio was greatly responsible for the spreading of Italian letters and culture throughout educated English society. Especially important was Florio's dictionary, which – thanks to its exuberant wealth of English definitions – made it initially possible for English readers to access Italy's rich Renaissance literary and scientific culture. Award-winning author Hermann W. Haller has prepared the first critical edition of A Worlde of Wordes, which features 46,000 Italian entries – among them dialect forms, erotic terminology, colloquial phrases, and proverbs of the Italian language. Haller reveals Florio as a brilliant English translator and creative writer, as well as a grammarian and language teacher. His helpful critical commentary highlights Florio's love of words and his life-long dedication to promoting Italian language and culture abroad.

Recently scholars have become increasingly aware of Zurich's role as an intellectual and cultural centre of the European Reformation. This study focuses on a little-known aspect of the Zurich church's international activity: its relationship with Italian-speaking evangelicals during the period 1540-1620. The work assesses the importance of Zwinglian influences within the early Italian evangelical movement and Zurich's contribution to the spread of the Reformation in Italian-speaking territories such as Locarno and southern Graubünden. It shows how, following the establishment of the Roman Inquisition in July 1542, senior Zurich churchmen emerged as important points of contact for Italian reformers in exile. A central concern of the study is the threat to the integrity of the Zwinglian settlement posed by religious radicals within the Italian exile community. Although the radicals were relatively few in number, their activities had a profound influence on the way in which the community as a whole came to be perceived by the Swiss and other Reformed churches. In Zurich, the turning point was a series of doctrinal disputes during the mid-sixteenth century, which culminated in the dissolution of the city's Italian church in November 1563. The alliance forged in the course of those disputes between the leadership of the Zurich church and theologically conservative Italian exiles became the basis for close co-operation in subsequent decades. Drawing heavily on unpublished sources from Swiss archives, the volume sheds light on the processes by which the boundaries of Reformed orthodoxy came to be defined. In particular, it demonstrates the importance of theological controversy and polemic as catalysts for the systematisation of doctrine during this period.