From Mary Queen of Scots to the Scottish Capuchins: Scotland as a symbol of Protestant persecution in seventeenth-century Italian literature
Italian authors of the seventeenth century produced a myriad of historical texts, tragedies, oratorios and poems that dealt with the events of Mary Stuart's life. The tremendous outcry that her story caused all over Europe made Scotland one of the most powerful symbols of persecution of Catholics by Protestants. It was the image of Scotland as a land of martyrdom that possibly prompted the publication of two seventeenth-century Italian ‘biographies’, narrating the vicissitudes of the lives of two Scottish capuchins, and which ran to multiple editions down to the eighteenth century. This article explores the literary reception of Mary Queen of Scots in seventeenth-century Italian literature and, in so doing, opens up religious, cultural, and political implications, pointing to links between Scottish Catholic and European intellectuals, and the publishing networks of sympathetic Marian writing.
VII. The Earl of Essex on the Stage
The romantic career of that unhappy favorite of Queen Elizabeth, Robert Devereux, second Earl of Essex, like the histories of Mary Stuart and of the Maréchal de Biron, has been often used as a subject for tragedy in Spanish, French, Italian, German, and English. Several of these plays have been studied more or less carefully at different times, so that I shall not do more than summarize those versions briefly before passing on to my main subject, the relation between Niccolo Biancolelli's Regina Statista d'Inghilterra and its commedia dell'Arte variants, of which the one presented here is hitherto unpublished.
Tudor Histories of the English Reformations, 1530-83
Contents: Introduction History,chronicles and the Apocalypse Identity, Protestantism and history Politics, counsel and publicness John Bale, Edward Halle and the Henrician Reformation Anne Askewe, John Bale and the a "unwritten veritiesa (TM) of history a "Making new novelties olda (TM): Marian histories of the Reformation John Foxe and the writing of history Conclusion: history and persecution Bibliography Index.