Religious Transformations in the Early Modern World: A Brief History with Documents

by Merry E. Wiesner-Hanks

Explore and analyze the varied transformations in the religious and intellectual life of peoples across the globe as Religious Transformations in the Early Modern World looks at reasons why leaders and thinkers from all over sought to reform existing religions, develop new spiritual practices, promote innovative texts, and, on occasion, even create new religions.Explore and analyze the varied transformations in the religious and intellectual life of peoples across the globe as Religious Transformations in the Early Modern World looks at reasons why leaders and thinkers from all over sought to reform existing religions, develop new spiritual practices, promote innovative texts, and, on occasion, even create new religions.

Genres: History

208 pages, Paperback

First published January 9, 2009

About the author

Merry E. Wiesner-Hanks (Ph.D., University of Wisconsin-Madison) taught first at Augustana College in Illinois, and since 1985 at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, where she is currently UWM Distinguished Professor in the department of history. She is the coeditor of the Sixteenth Century Journal and the author or editor of more than twenty books, most recently The Marvelous Hairy Girls: The Gonzales Sisters and Their Worlds and Gender in History. She is the former Chief Reader for Advanced Placement World History.

Reviews

[Katie · Rating 4 out of 5]

Ugh, the Bedford Series. Can I talk about the Bedford Series for a minute, and how great it is? These slim little books pack in so much information, and really know how to present primary sources to a broad, introductory audience. They provide just the right amount of background information and then let the sources speak for themselves, with a whole bevy of thoughtful questions appended. They range from the broadest of topics (global early modern religion, all of the Silk Road) to the precise and specific (there's a whole entry just on the 1959 Kitchen Debate). They are a treasure and I have yet to find one I don't like.

This is a particularly fun one that covers religious change in the early modern world: the rising predominance of Huitzilopochtli among the Mexica and the adaptation of Mexica language and symbolism by Spanish Jesuits, the growing interiority on both sides of the Reformation, the controversial mysticism of Sufism and Kabbalah, the syncretism of Akbar and the Mughals, the contested legacy of Confucianism in China and Japan. There are so many cool details in this book, and given the huge swath that it covers it still never manages to feel overwhelming. it's fun to pick out the echoes between all the primary documents, and see how questioning and and increased emphasis on interiority over external ritual was present nearly everywhere around the globe at this point in time.

My only nitpick (it's a small one) is that while most regions feature heavily the interplay between religious change and political rulership, the section on Europe is largely stuck in theory and theology. That's not a bad thing necessarily, but it makes the book feel a bit unbalanced (and, it could be argued, results in an underplaying of the rampant religious violence in Europe in the early modern period).

Still, a really fun read. I'm still a bit burnt out on history after finishing my dissertation but it was a pleasure to speed through this one.

[Delanie Slattery · Rating 3 out of 5]

This was a required book for my Core humanities class 202. I am glad that we read all of it, and not just sections, and I really liked the background before each set of documents.