INTELLECTUAL HISTORY: STUDIES, CHALLENGES, POSSIBILITIES 3rd Annual Workshop of the Intellectual History Working Group Friday 22 February 2019 Sala del Camino, Villa Salviati, EUI ABSTRACTS PANEL 1 Eduardo Fernández Guerrero (EUI), Notes on early modern prophetic discourse and the Apocalypsis Nova Over the last twenty years, scholarship on Late Medieval and Early Modern prophetism has increasingly tackled prophecy together with either millenarianist expectations or the divination of future events. Without denying the close links of prophecy with millenarianism and divination, reducing the first to a mere vehicle of the latter has turned the prophetic phenomenon into a passive category, the product of a particular set of social circumstances, usually moments of crisis and/or unusually rapid social and economic change. I argue that prophecy, on the contrary, was articulated into a set of discursive practices that proved extremely productive to intervene in intellectual and political debates between the Late Middle Ages and the early modern period. For this, I will comment on the intellectual history of prophecy while discussing recent scholarly contributions to this topic. Johannes Huhtinen (Abo Akademi University), The Reformation of imagination: John Foxe and the construction of Protestant Mythology The subject of this paper is the creation of Protestant myths. In England, as elsewhere in Europe, the newly invented printing press made images available to the larger public. Unleashing the powers of mind in the form of verbal and visual images was never an unproblematic form of activity. In fact, the faculty of imagination formed a major dilemma to the Protestant and Catholic thinkers alike: it was a source of error (false consciousness) and idolatry (false worship). While visual images were potentially fuel for errors, they were simultaneously –as classic theorists of rhetoric tell us– a potent way for reaching people. This paper looks at the most superstitious imaginings of the mind: myths, and stories that do not draw meaning from a rational logic. More particularly, it considers the role of creative imagination in the texts of the most important Protestant historiographer John Foxe and seeks to expose the visual and verbal imagery he constructed to win over his readers. Between the 1550s and 1590s, when the making of Protestant iconography was still an ongoing process, the scope of imagination altered dramatically and the categories of the real and the imagined took a new direction. A crucial aim of this paper is to reassess the concept of mythology and its coverage, as well as to demonstrate that myths are an inseparable part of human thought. It aims at answering why and what kind of myths writers constructed from the late sixteenth century onwards. Thomas Ashby (EUI), Islamic Representations in the Patriarcha controversy: Locke, Sidney, Tyrrell The posthumous publication of Sir Robert Filmer’s Patriarcha (1680) generated much critical debate when it emerged, arguing for absolutist and patriarchal monarchy based on principles of divine right and passive obedience. Responses included the first of John Locke’s Two treatises on government (1689), Algernon Sidney’s Discourses concerning government (1698), and James Tyrrell’s Patriarcha non monarcha (1681), all three of which were composed, even if unpublished, in the early 1680s. Throughout the responses of Locke, Sidney, and Tyrrell we find various representations of Islamic regimes, people, and politics, both historical and contemporary, which are used to not only undermine Filmer, but to contest his own use of Islamic representation. It should be noted that I use the term ‘Islamic’ here to broadly refer to a host of peoples and states associated with Islam that are commented upon, often in the collective, by English and European contemporaries. To this end a variety of differing categories, terminologies, and constructs are utilised in contemporary vocabularies, some of which are more general (such as ‘Mahometan’ or ‘Saracen’), some specific (such as ‘Algerine’ or ‘Mameluke’), and others that are more flexible, used generally or specifically (such as ‘Turk’ or ‘Moor’). This paper will seek to demonstrate what these authors were doing with these representations, both in terms of challenging Filmer, but also in terms defining their own politics and identities in contrast with the Islamic ‘other’. Moreover, exchange can also be witnessed, with Sidney, for example, citing the work of Leo Africanus (born al-Hasan ibn Muhammad al-Wazzan al-Fasi) and making mention of the Moroccan embassy to London, led by Mohammed ben Hadou, in 1681-1682. The goal of this research more broadly, therefore, is to highlight the overlooked role of Islamic sources, histories, representations, and exchanges in the Eurocentric, when not Anglocentric, history of political thought. PANEL 2 Muireann McCann (EUI), Revolutionary priests? Students of the Collège des Irlandais From the middle of the sixteenth century onwards Irish and British Catholics sought education abroad resulting in the founding of Irish, English and Scottish colleges across Europe. Throughout the course of my research I have been struck by the changing reactions to continentally educated Irish priests in Britain. Common stereotypes of such priests, particularly those educated in the Collège des Irlandais in Paris, were that they were disloyal and potentially even agents of subversion infected with a revolutionary spirit from their time in France. This fear of the subversive priest persisted into the nineteenth century. By the middle of the century, however, the target had changed. Those who had been educated in the remaining Catholic colleges were now held up as well-educated and well-behaved. There was a more pressing perceived threat, the rebellious priests of St Patrick’s College, Maynooth, characterised as politically dangerous supporters of the campaign for the repeal of the Act of Union. The source of fear had changed but the suspicion of priests infected with revolutionary ideas persisted during the period. This paper will demonstrate how international and domestic developments altered perceptions of the role of continentally educated Irish priests in Britain and Ireland. Vuk Uskokovic (EUI), Women and Episcopal Authority in Early Modern Montenegro This paper explores the presence of women in the acts and correspondence of 18th-century bishops of Montenegro, in particular focusing on how protective intercessions on behalf of individual women before Venetians authorities were essential in constructing and projecting episcopal authority. For the bishops, it is argued, identification with the poor and the oppressed, and the advocacy of their causes, was a source of spiritual authority and influence, on which rested the bishops’ political role as intermediaries between the communes of Montenegro and the Venetian provveditori in Cattaro. The discourse the bishops used in advancing the claims of their spiritual daughters—which reflected their political, ecclesiastic, and personal concerns—provided the framework within which were preserved the few voice of the actual women of early modern Montenegro, and is thus of immense importance for the reconstruction of their position. Daniel Banks (EUI), Microhistory and the circulation of ideas: reflections on transnational approaches to democratic radicalism in the second half of the 19th century The aim of the proposed presentation would be to reflect on certain elements which trouble the early stages of my doctoral research project, with the hope of clarifying certain methodological points which might help inform my first trips to the archive. The project examines how radical democratic and republican ideas and practices circulated in the Western Mediterranean basin between the post-1848 moment and the mid-to-late 1870s, when it seems that radical liberal-democracy had lost the primacy of antagonist politics to the International Workingman’s Association (IWMA) in all three of the European countries (Italy, France, Spain) bordering the Western Mediterranean’s shores. I propose to adopt a micro-historical approach to the topic: by following particular actors in their trajectories of political activism and intellectual production in various different times and spaces, I hope to flesh out the outlines of a vibrant and heterogeneous political culture which is often treated only as a variant of 19th century liberalism or as an antagonist of early internationalism. In this sense, the research project also aims to question the relationship between radical democrats and early Internationalism, following the idea that Internationalism was not as radically opposed to earlier political projects as might seem. A question which is harder to answer is that regarding whether there was a certain specific and different radical democratic political culture in these countries bordering the Western Mediterranean. The proposed presentation would first offer a reflection on these and other considerations relative to the construction of a theoretical and methodological framework through which to carry out this research project, before going on to discuss the microhistorical approach per se, by providing an outline of recent propositions in favour of ‘micro-spatial history,’ and considering how these might benefit such a study on the circulation of ideas. PANEL 3 Marius Ostrowski (All Souls College, Oxford & Visiting Fellow, EUI), Socialism’s heart of darkness: the origins of ‘Eurafrica’ in dissident Social