Departmental Papers (History)
Welcome to the Department of History at the University of Pennsylvania. Over thirty historians in the standing faculty with a broad range of research specialties advance our understanding of the past. Penn's graduate program trains the next generation of scholars and teachers. The Department's strong commitment to undergraduate education can be seen in the prominence of the history major, one of the largest on campus, in the numerous teaching awards earned by both standing faculty and graduate students, and history's strong presence in general education. History faculty direct and participate in many interdisciplinary centers on the Penn campus, and edit a number of scholarly journals.
70 results
Search results
Publication Governance (Spain)(2014-01-01) Feros, AntonioPublication El Viejo Monarca y Los Nuevos Favoritos: Los Discursos Sobre La Privanza en El Reinado de Felipe II / The old Monarch and the new Favorites: Discourses on the Privanza During Philip II's Reign(1997) Feros, AntonioRESUMEN: Durante el reinado de Felipe II, y especialmente desde comienzos de la década de 1580, se desarrollan una serie de iniciativas por parte del monarca que supondrían la aparición no sólo de nuevas prácticas políticas, sino también la introducción de cambios importantes en los discursos políticos dominantes. Estas iniciativas políticas promovidas durante los últimos años del reinado de Felipe II fueron en parte inspirados por el llamado "nuevo humanismo", el cual asociado a las teorías de la "razón de estado" tenía como punto central de su discurso la necesidad de promover la capacidad de acción independiente de la monarquía, frente a los obstáculos legales y administrativos impuestos por otros miembros del cuerpo político —consejos reales y Cortes—. Algunas de estas iniciativas políticas se basaban en experiencias anteriores (la creación de Juntas, por ejemplo) pero otras eran decididamente nuevas, como lo era el intento de evitar la presencia de facciones cortesanas enfrentadas. Elemento central en este proceso fue la creciente participación en la gobernación cotidiana de la monarquía de los llamados "favoritos del rey", quienes promovieron las teorías y prácticas políticas definidas con anterioridad. Del mismo modo, con la presencia de estos "nuevos favoritos" se inició el desarrollo de un discurso en el cual los favoritos reales aparecían representados como "ministros" del monarca, un discurso que sería plenamente desarrollado en las primeras décadas del siglo XVII bajo las privanzas del Duque de Lerma y el Conde Duque de Olivares. ABSTRACT: During the 1580s and 1590s, Philip II and his close counselors implemented political initiatives which resulted in important changes in the royalist political discourse and in the ways in which politics were conducted. These changes were in part inspired by the political philosophy of reason of state, promoted by the "new humanists", whose central political premise was the need to consolidate and expand the monarchy's right for independent action free of the legal and administrative constrains imposed by other members of the body politic, e.g. royal councils and Cortes. Although Philip II continued to advance initiatives began in the early years of his reign (such as the creation of committees ad hoc, or Juntas), towards the end of his rule he undertook others that were radically new (such as Philip's attempts to avoid the division of the court into conflicting factions). Throughout this period the king's favorites also played an increasing role in the everyday ruling of the monarchy. The merging of what contemporaries believed was a new type of royal favorite encouraged the surge of a political discourse portraying the favorite as the king's minister, and later as the king's principal minister. These developments led to a theoretical revolution which culminated during the first decades of the seventeenth century under the "privanzas" of Lerma and Olivares.Publication Three Anglo-Jewish Portraits and Their Legacy for Today: Moses Marcus, the Convert; Abraham Tang, the Radical Maskil; David Levi, the Defender of Judaism(2007-01-01) Ruderman, David BMy fascination with Anglo-Jewish history emerged by chance, but has been profound enough for me to write two books on the subject. My appreciation of the richness, diversity and significance of the history of Jewish cultural history on English soil continues to grow and deepen. There is a long tradition of Jewish historical writing, exemplified by the work of the Jewish Historical Society of England. But modern historians have barely begun to take pre-twentieth century Anglo-Jewish history seriously. The drama of modernity seems still to be regarded as a German story, beginning with Mendelssohn and continuing into Eastern Europe. Historians such as Todd Engelman and David Katz have made major contributions to our subject, but in so doing have sometimes revealed their own biases.Publication Review of Ruth Ruth Mackay and Sir John Elliott, The Limits of Royal Authority: Resistance and Obedience in Seventeenth‐Century Castile(2001-12-01) Feros, AntonioDuring the 1640s, many Spaniards and Europeans believed that something was going terribly wrong in the Spanish monarchy. Signs of general discontent were widespread, as demonstrated by insurgent political movements in Catalonia (1640), Portugal (1640), and Naples (1647–48). In addition, between roughly 1620 and 1650 the Spanish monarchy was embroiled in an endless and debilitating “global war,” with its armies battling across Europe, America, and Asia. Many of these tensions and conflicts were linked to the attempts of the Spanish government, led by Philip IV (1621–1665) and his favorite, and prime minister, the Count-Duke of Olivares, to introduce reforms aimed at creating what was known at the time as a “regular state,” a centralized monarchy in which the king reigned supreme. Although tensions began to abate after the fall of Olivares in 1643, it should not surprise anyone that the 1640s were a period during which many of Philip IV’s subjects believed that the Spanish monarchy was on the verge of total collapse.Publication The Impact of Science on Jewish Culture and Society in Venice (With Special Reference to Graduates of Padua's Medical School)(1987) Ruderman, David BIn 1624, Joseph ben Judah Hamiz successfully completed his doctorate in philosophy and medicine at the University of Padua1. Besides the joy of Hamiz and his immediate family must have felt at this achievement, the event itself hardly seemed to merit any real significance either for Padua or for its Jewish community. In the beginning of the seventeenth century, a constant trickle of Jews were among the hundreds of students annually graduating from Padua's renowned medical school2. Nevertheless, Hamiz's graduation appears to have elicited an unusual outpouring of favorable, even elated, response from some of the most important luminaries of Italian Jewish culture of this era.Publication Das Ghetto und die Entstehung einer jüdischen Kultur im Europas der Frühen Neuzit: Betrachtungen zur Geschichtsschreibung(2012-01-01) Ruderman, David BDer Mythos des Ghettos als Ort der kulturellen Isolation der Juden wird uns trotz einer Fülle gegensätzlicher Erkenntnisse, die diesen Mythos widerlegen, immer begleiten. Immer noch müssen wir lesen, die Juden hätten Aufklärung und Emanzipation dadurch erreicht, dass sie eine hermetisch abgeschlossene und entfremdete Existenzform überwanden, die durch ihre sozialen und politischen Einschränkungen fest gefügt war, um Schließlich einen vollkommenen Status von Integration und sozialer Gleichstellung mit den nicht-jüdischen gesellschaftlichen Mehreithen zu erlangen. Diese Geschichte des triumphalen Wegs vom Ghetto zur Emanzipation, deren wichtigster Verfechter Heinrich Graetz1 war, hat nicht nur die moderne jüdische Geschichtsschreibung seit dem 19. Jahrhundert beherrscht, sondern ist auch Teil des modernen Grundwortschatzes der jüdischen Erinnerung geworden, mit Formulierungen wie »das Zeitalter des Chettos«, »Ghetto-Mentalität«, »der Ghetto-Jude« oder »aus dem Ghetto«. nach allgemeinem Verständnis steht der Bergriff »Ghetto« für Engstirnigkeit und Eingrenzung, während Emanzipation die wünschenswerte Situation von äußerster Freiheit, Kreativität und Selbstbestimmung impliziert. Mythen halten sich zäh, und wir sind so konditioniert, dass wir diese Dichotomie beibehalten, obgleich sich einige Generationen von Historikern bemüht haben, sie abzumildern, um schließlich den Gegensatz von Isolation, d.h. Ghettoisierung gegenüber Offenheit, d.h. Emanzipation ganz in Frage zu stellen.Publication Philosophy, Kabbalah and Science in the Culture of the Italian Ghetto: On the Debate between Samson Morpurgo and Aviad Sar Shalom Basilae(1993) Ruderman, David BTwo common assumptions about Jewish culture in the period of the Italian ghettos have been disavowed by contemporary scholarship. First, that in contrast to the earlier period of the Renaissance, Jewish culture had become and arid intellectual desert, relatively devoid of contact with the outstide world, sterile and uncreative, isolated and absorbed in pietistic and messianic delirium; and second, that the primary agent of this cultural retreat, that throwback to medievalism and obscurantism, was the kabbalah. To the contrary, we have come to learn that despite the patent diminution of social and cultural contacts between Jews and Christians engendered by the ghetto walls, Jewish culture remained vibrant, creative, and open to new expressions of literary and artistic accomplishment. Indeed, the ghetto, with all its negative connotations, was the virtual birthplace of bold innovations in Hebrew poetry and drama, in music, in medical and scientific writing, as well as in the traditional domains of rabbinics, moralistic literature, and liturgy.1 And kabbalah, paradoxically, as Robert Bonfil had recently argued, was the critical mediator between the medieval and modern worlds, the primary agent of many of these innovations, particularly in the religious sphere, and even of modernity itself.2Publication Hope against Hope: Jewish and Christian Messianic Expectations in the Late Middle Ages(1991) Ruderman, David BIn the year 1473, Francesco de Meleto, a young Florentine with delusions of prophetic grandeur, journeyed to the city of Constantinople with a companion of his native city, Benedetto Manetti. There he sought from a number of Jewish legal scholarls opinions regarding the time of the coming of the Messiah and the ultimate conversion of the Jews to Christianity.1 He was especially pleased to gain the acquaintance of one notable Rabbi who secretly confessed to him, so he claimed, that all the Jews would convert to the Christian faith if "the Messiah for whom they had waited will not come during the entire year of our salvation, 1484."2 The Jew based his prediction on the Book of Daniel, refusing to elaborate but claiming nevertheless that this view was not merely his own but also that "of all the other masters of their law."3 Delighted that the Jews of his generation were ready to confirm his wildest fantast regarding their imminent conversion, Meleto returned to Italy where he preached and composed treaties predictin the end of days and the ultimate conversion of the Jews and Moslems. In his Convivio de'segreti della scriptura santa, written some time after 1513, he records the Rabbi's remarks, adding his own clarifications with respect to the Daniel prophecies. Daniel must have indicated, so he claimed, that "in this time their great persecution begins, brought about by the kings of Spain and Portugal," representing no less than the universal flagellation of Christ's enemies which precedes the renovation of the Catholic Church.4 Meleto had certified beyond doubt by Jewish counsel and by the evidence of Jewish suffering that the end of their "blasphemy" was at hand leading undeniably to the universal redemption of all mankind.Publication Looking Backward and Forward: Rethinking Modernity in the Light of Early Modernity(2017-01-01) Ruderman, David BGiven its composite nature, The Cambridge History of Early Modern Judaism cannot easily stake out a single authoritative position on what early modern Jewish culture and society means in its totality. Taking as a whole the variegated perspectives presented elsewhere in this volume, and despite the strong hands of the editors in organizing a coherent exposition of the period, it is virtually impossible to expect one unified viewpoint to emerge. Without some notion of what the whole representes, however, one is hard pressed to suggest in what ways this epoch is continuous or discontinuous with the period that follows it — that is, the modern period itself.Publication Buchdruck und jüdische Kultur in der Frühen Neuzeit Europas(2009-01-01) Ruderman, David BIch beginne diesen Vortrag mit der Erinnerung an zwei große Geister des 16. Jahrhunderts, nämlich an den aschkenasischen Rabbiner Moses Isserles (1525/1530-1572), und insbesondere an die Publikation von Karos standardisiertem Kodex des jüdischen Gesetzes.1 Der Kodex wurde 1565 in Venedig erstmals veröffentlicht und dann 1578-80 in Krakau mitsamt den Kommentaren von Moses Isserles neu aufgelegt. Isserles führte diesen Text kühn in seiner Jeschiwa in Krakau ein, wodurch er nicht nur die gesamte aschkenasische Gesetzepraxis auf das Material reduzierte, das in diesem Sammelwerk vorgelegt wurde, sondern, mehr noch, ein neues Gesetzeskompendium schuf, bei dim die traditionellen Grenzen verschwammen, die bisher Aschkenasim und Sephardim durch die althergebrachten Gewohnheiten getrennt hatten.