Contexts of Conscience in Early Modern Europe, 1500-1700

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 libertà 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.Schüßler 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 Bibliography

BERNARD CAPP Professor of History, University of Warwick NICHOLAS DAVIDSON Lecturer in Modern History and Tutorial Fellow, St Edmund Hall, University of Oxford MICHAEL HUNTER Professor of History, Birkbeck College, University of London JAMES KEENAN Professor of Moral Theology, Weston Jesuit School of Theology, Cambridge, Massachusetts, USA RUDOLF SHÜßLER Professor of Philosophy, University of Bayreuth, Germany JOHANN SOMMERVILLE Professor of History, University of Wisconsin-Madison, USA JOHN SPURR Reader in History, University of Wales, Swansea MARTIN STONE Professor of Philosophy, Leuven Catholic University, Belgium DAVID TURNER Lecturer in History, University of Glamorgan ALEXANDRA WALSHAM Senior Lecturer in History, University of Exeter