While the social and intellectual basis of voluntary martyrdom is fiercely debated, scholarship on Christian martyrdom has unanimously distinguished between “martyrdom” and “voluntary martyrdom” as separate phenomena, practices, and categories from the second century onward. Yet there is a startling dearth of evidence for the existence of the category of the “voluntary martyr” prior to the writings of Clement of Alexandria. This paper has two interrelated aims: to review the evidence for the category of the voluntary martyr in ancient martyrological discourse and to trace the emergence of the category of the voluntary martyr in modern scholarship on martyrdom. It will argue both that the category began to emerge only in the third century in the context of efforts to justify flight from persecution, and also that the assumption of Clement's taxonomy of approaches to martyrdom by scholars is rooted in modern constructions of the natural.

Reforming efforts at the Council of Trent (1545–1563), the challenges of Protestantism, the rise of national states, and the reassessment of just war doctrine, had initiated a moment of crisis for crusading by the mid-sixteenth century. Indeed, historians have described these trends as signaling the end of the movement. This article explores the theoretical underpinnings deployed by an elite group of Spanish theologians and churchmen in May of 1567 to shore up their monarch's claim to a lucrative version of the crusade indulgence granted by popes since the fifteenth century. By rehearsing traditional arguments, eschewing those they saw as obsolete, and deploying new ones, these theorists expose the remarkable adaptability of crusading. The integrity of papally sanctioned holy war against the enemies of the faith collapsed in later centuries with the rise of international law and recognition of permanent divisions within the respublica Christiana. Yet, the ability of sixteenth-century Spanish theorists to recast ideology in the face of shifting intellectual, cultural, and social tides indicates the continuing viability of crusading during a period of inchoateness.

In seventeenth-century Italy, Christian relics and images were scattered through urban spaces, not only because the faithful were expected to acknowledge and touch them, but because their moving through city streets in processions celebrated communitas, the sense of belonging that was so much part of early modern civic existence.

The Inquisitorial archive in Modena holds at least twelve processi against professing Jews (who lived for the most part in the city capital or in smaller Jewish communities scattered through the duchy) for the offence of desecrating Christian images during its most active period of prosecution between 1598 and 1640. Denunciations accused Jews of removing crucifixes from walls, stoning or tampering Christian statues and religious paintings, and failing to show the necessary respect to images carried through the streets. This paper explores the frequency of the image desecration charges against Jews in early modern Italy and in particular the duchy of Modena, the pivotal impact of internal Christian processes about their own images and whether these objects did in fact have inherent or stable meanings for Jews at this time.

This article seeks to make an original contribution to the study of early modern Christian devotion by examining a source that has received no scholarly attention of any kind: Johannes Christoph Oelhafen's Pious Meditations on the Most Sorrowful Bereavement (1619). Oelhafen, a prominent Nuremberg lawyer, composed the Pious Meditations shortly after his wife, Anna Maria, died. He did so in order to console himself and his eight children in the midst of their considerable grief. Drawing on well-known rhetorical devices and consolatory remedies, Oelhafen produced a work of private devotion that is remarkable in terms of its rich affectivity and considerable artistic skill. The Pious Meditations was never published, rather Oelhafen intended it for a private circle of intimates, especially his children and their posterity. The work illustrates especially well the theme of spiritual self-care that was so prominent in early modern Lutheran devotion. The Pious Meditations also demonstrates how creative and resourceful early modern Christians could be as they sought to contend with mortality, loss, despair, the obligations of parenthood, and the frequently mysterious workings of providence.

This article sketches an archeology of the apocryphal myth of Santa Efigenia, the Ethiopian virgin saint celebrated in the southern coastal of valley of Cañete, Peru. The history of Santa Efigenia is used to analyze the invention of popular myths and processions in a rural community in contrast to the cornerstone of popular national religiosity in Peru, the Lord of the Miracles (Señor de los Milagros). The popular worship and diffusion of these devotions and processions intersect with the contested formation of national identity in early and late twentieth century Peru. Moreover, they speak to how traditional and popular forms of religious worship are valued and devalued.

The African diaspora in Peru and the Pacific coast of South America has been difficult to historicize because of the scant cultural evidence for an Afro-Andean nostalgia or separation from an African homeland. The rediscovery and devotion of Santa Efigenia and her emergent popularity in Peru and larger presence in Brazil and Cuba is compelling evidence that Afro-Peruvians have a direct connection with African culture and history and the early religious history of Catholic saints and virgins.