Contexts of Conscience in Early Modern Europe, 1500-1700 [Hardcover]

In the early modern period, the conscience stood as a powerful mediator between God and man, directing and judging moral actions. This collection conveys the breadth of the conscience's jurisdiction, analyzing its impact on politics, religion, science, and the understanding of gender and sexuality. It demonstrates how individuals resolved ethical problems in these areas through applying the methods of casuistry, the branch of theology devoted to resolving difficult moral cases. However, casuistry itself was challenged by newer sources of moral guidance.Acknowledgements Notes on the Contributors Introduction Scrupulosity and Conscience: Probabilism in Early Modern Scholastic Ethics; M.Stone Was William Perkin's 'Whole Treatise of Cases of Consciences' Casuistry?: Hermeneutics and British Practical Divinity; J.Keenan Ordeal of Conscience: Casuistry, Conformity and Confessional Identity in Post-Reformation England; A.Walsham 'Fuggir la libert?? della coscienza': Conscience and the Inquisition in Sixteenth-Century Italy; N.Davidson Conscience, Counsel and Theocracy at the Spanish Hapsburg Court; H.Braun The Decline of Conscience as a Political Guide: William Higden's 'View of the English Constitution' (1709); E.Vallance The Disquieted Mind in Casuistry and Natural Philosophy: Robert Boyle and Thomas Barlow; M.Hunter Rules of Conscience and the Case of Galileo; R.Sch????ler Gender, Conscience and Casuistry: Women and Conflicting Obligations in Early Modern England; B.Capp 'Secret and Immodest Curiosities'?: Sex, Marriage and Conscience in Early Modern England; D.Turner 'The Strongest Bond of Conscience': Oaths and the Limits of Tolerance in Early Modern England; J.Spurr Conscience, Law and Things Indifferent: Arguments on Toleration from the Vestiarian Controversy to Hobbes and Locke; J.Somerville Index BibliographyBERNARD CAPP Professor of History, University of WarwickNICHOLAS DAVIDSON Lecturer in Modern History and Tutorial Fellow, St Edmund Hall, University of OxfordlSØ