Encyclopedia of the Renaissance and the Reformation

The second edition of this encyclopedia, under its new
title of Encyclopedia of the Renaissance and the Reformation,
aims to capitalize on the strengths of its predecessor while
also expanding its coverage of areas that have risen in
prominence during the sixteen years since the first edition
appeared. The first edition treated the controversies and
course of the religious turmoil of the 16th century as
background to the cultural developments, but with the in-
clusion of Reformation in the present title these have now
become the subject of more focused examination. Over
200 entirely new entries have been written, and many ex-
isting ones enlarged, to take account of the widened
scope.
Another aspect of which the new edition takes ac-
count is the recent upsurge of interest in women's history
with a greatly increased coverage of this area and of social
history generally. As the late Thomas G. Bergin implies in
his Introduction to the first edition, all start and end lim-
its for historical movements are necessarily porous. A
slight relaxation of the previous end date—1620, or the
Battle of the White Mountain—has enabled some useful
threads to be further pursued, especially in the fields of
music and science.
A short list of English-language Further Reading fol-
lows after many of the articles and a bibliography of more
general works on the period has been supplied at the end
of the book. However, information on the publishing his-

tory and reception of key Renaissance texts has been in-

corporated into the articles in line with the belief that the

spread of both Renaissance and Reformation was, as far as

we can reconstruct it, very largely a book-based dynamic.

The flood of new ideas that the individual reader could tap

into for him- or herself unleashed a potential that had

hitherto been circumscribed by the authoritarian struc-

tures of the medieval Church or feudal society. In these

movements lie the roots of the modern perception of the

validity of the individual—which is what makes the study

of them necessary and fruitful if we are to understand our

own position in the continuum of Western civilization.

Jennifer Speake

October 2003

Note:The entries in this book are arranged alphabetically,

with cross references to other relevant articles indicated

by the use of SMALL CAPITALS. Although this arrangement

is largely self-indexing, a separate index at the end of the

book enables people mentioned in the text to be located.

References to plate numbers are given in certain of the ar-

ticles (e.g.: See Plate I). These refer to the section of color

plates included at the center of the book.

PREFACE

iixx