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17 results

The Cambridge Companion to Counter-Reformation Sanctity
  • Edited by Jan Machielsen, Emily Michelson, Katrina B. Olds
  • Coming soon
  • Expected online publication date:
    December 2025
    Print publication:
    08 January 2026
  • This groundbreaking Companion explores how Counter-Reformation sanctity reshaped religious identities, sacred traditions, and devotional practices that transformed Catholicism into the first global religion. Offering a fresh perspective on early modern Catholicism, it moves beyond traditional debates about Reformation and Reform and presents sanctity as the defining lens through which to view the period's transformative changes. By examining the lives, representations, and global impact of saints, the Companion demonstrates how sanctity countered the Protestant challenge and also transformed the very fabric of Catholicism between 1500 and 1750. Organized into four thematic sections – models of sanctity, the creation and contestation of sanctity, the representation of saints, and everyday interactions with saints – the volume also provides insight into the role of holiness during this pivotal period in Church history. Connecting history, theology, art history, and material culture, this interdisciplinary Companion serves as an indispensable resource for scholars and students seeking a comprehensive understanding of early modern Catholicism's influence on European and global history.

  • Welcome

  • Jan Machielsen, Paul Readman
  • Journal:
    Transactions of the Royal Historical Society / Volume 3 / December 2025
    Published online by Cambridge University Press:
    06 November 2025, pp. 1-2
    Print publication:
    December 2025
    • Article
      • You have access
      • Open access
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  • 7 - The Myth of Pope Joan

  • from Part II - Women, Gender, Sexuality
  • Edited by Joëlle Rollo-Koster, University of Rhode Island, Robert A. Ventresca, King’s University College at Western University, Melodie H. Eichbauer, Florida Gulf Coast University, Miles Pattenden, University of Oxford
  • Book:
    The Cambridge History of the Papacy
    Published online:
    28 February 2025
    Print publication:
    20 March 2025, pp 221-245

  • Summary

    During the thirteenth century, stories began to circulate in Rome of the existence of a female pope. What likely began as popular satire was eagerly picked up by monastic chroniclers who had their own axes to grind. For the papacy, the existence of a female pope – most commonly called Joan – only became problematic after the Reformation, when Protestants saw an opportunity to use these medieval (and therefore Catholic) authorities to challenge the papal apostolic succession and identify the papacy with the biblical Whore of Babylon. The arguments employed by both sides are hugely revealing of how Catholics and Protestants saw themselves and each other. More recently, Pope Joan has moved into the realm of fiction: in film and literature she became a feminist icon. Transgender readings – Joan as man in a woman’s body, rather than a woman in a man’s garment – are bound to inspire new interpretations of her story.

  • Welcome

  • Jan Machielsen
  • Journal:
    Transactions of the Royal Historical Society / Volume 2 / December 2024
    Published online by Cambridge University Press:
    06 December 2024, pp. 1-2
    Print publication:
    December 2024
    • Article
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      • Open access
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The War on Witchcraft

The War on Witchcraft
  • Andrew Dickson White, George Lincoln Burr, and the Origins of Witchcraft Historiography
  • Jan Machielsen
  • Published online:
    24 June 2021
    Print publication:
    22 July 2021
  • Historians of the early modern witch-hunt often begin histories of their field with the theories propounded by Margaret Murray and Montague Summers in the 1920s. They overlook the lasting impact of nineteenth-century scholarship, in particular the contributions by two American historians, Andrew Dickson White (1832–1918) and George Lincoln Burr (1857–1938). Study of their work and scholarly personae contributes to our understanding of the deeply embedded popular understanding of the witch-hunt as representing an irrational past in opposition to an enlightened present. Yet the men's relationship with each other, and with witchcraft sceptics – the heroes of their studies – also demonstrates how their writings were part of a larger war against 'unreason'. This Element thus lays bare the ways scholarly masculinity helped shape witchcraft historiography, a field of study often seen as dominated by feminist scholarship. Such meditation on past practice may foster reflection on contemporary models of history writing.