The Religions of the Book

This book is the first study to explore the relationship between Christianity, Judaism and Islam in the Early Modern period.

The Religions of the Book is the first study to explore the relationship between Christianity, Judaism and Islam in the Early Modern period. A series of distinguished contributors debate the complicated terms in which these ‘Religions of the Book’ interacted in negative and positive ways, revealing predictable hostilities alongside attempts to forge links and explore connections. The collection illuminates a crucial but neglected area of Eruopean culture from the late Middle Ages to the end of the seventeenth century.

MATTHEW DIMMOCK is Lecturer in English at the University of Sussex, UK
ANDREW HADFIELD is Professor of English at the University of Sussex, UK

“[A] welcome collection of essays on a diverse range of subjects. The editors are to be congratulated for bringing them all together in this thought provoking publication.” —Nancy Bisaha, Vassar College

Introduction: The Religions of the Book, 1400-1660–M.Dimmock & A.Hadfield * The Crusade of Varna, 1443-5: What Motivated the Crusaders?–C.Imber * The Jews, the Arma Christi Rolls and the Popular Passion–A.Bale * The Mediterranean Maritime Frontier between Christendom and Islam–C.Heywood * ‘Suppose a Painter Wished to Couple a Horse’s Neck with a Man’s Head’: Early English Notions of Islamic Hybridity–M.Dimmock * ‘Turks’ and ‘Christians’: The Iconography of Possession in the Depiction of the Ottoman-Venetian-Hapsburg Frontiers, 1550-1689–P.Brummett * ‘A Parallel Made with the Jewish Sanhedrin’: Tolerating Judaism in the Early Modern Church and State–E.Glaser * Milton Among the Muslims–G.MacLean * Confounding Babel: The Language of Religion in the English Revolution–M.Birchwood