The Jacobean Grand Tour: Early Stuart Travellers in Europe
Although the eighteenth century is traditionally seen as the age of the Grand Tour, it was in fact the continental travel of Jacobean noblemen which really constituted the beginning of the Tour as an institutionalized phenomenon. James I's peace treaty with Spain in 1604 rendered travel to Catholic Europe both safer and more respectable than it had been under the Tudors and opened up the continent to a new generation of aristocratic explorers, enquirers and adventurers. This book examines the political and cultural significance of the encounters that resulted, focusing in particular on two of England's greatest, and newly united, families: the Cecils and the Howards. It also considers the ways in which Protestants and Catholics experienced the aesthetic and intellectual stimulus of European travel and how the cultural experiences of the travellers formed the essential ingredients in what became the Grand Tour.
Peiresc's Europe: Learning and Virtue in the Seventeenth Century
Nicolas-Claude Fabri de Peiresc (1580-1637) was, during his lifetime, one of Europe's most famous men. This book is the first in English to portray this extraordinary man as well as his whole circle, including Pope Urban VIII, Galileo, Peter-Paul Rubens, and Hugo Grotius, and many others. Looking through the lens of Peiresc's life, Peter N. Miller brings into focus the entire early seventeenth-century world of learning.
Imperial City: Rome under Napoleon
In 1798 the armies of the French Revolution tried to transform Rome from the capital of the Papal States to a Jacobin Republic. For the next two decades, Rome was the subject of power struggles between the forces of the Empire and the Papacy, while Romans endured the unsuccessful efforts of Napoleon's best and brightest to pull the ancient city into the modern world. Against this historical backdrop, Susan Vandiver Nicassio weaves together an absorbing social, cultural, and political history of Rome and its people. Based on primary sources and incorporating two centuries of Italian, French, and international research, her work reveals what life was like for Romans in the age of Napoleon.