Both Extirpate and Vagabond Forever: Material Formations of Faith in Early Modern Compilation

Wednesday, April 27, 12:30-1:30 p.m. on Zoom
RSVP to ICTC@seattleu.edu

Dr. Allison Machlis Meyer will present from her ongoing research project about the processes of compiling eclectic, separately created and separately printed works into unique physical books—called Sammelbände—which construct early modern thinking about religious difference. These compiled volumes provide compelling work for an examination of the fraught religious identities permeating the early modern period. 

Meyer’s presentation considers how Hebraist Hugh Broughton’s 1613 Seder Olam participates in the Reformation’s turn toward a historical rather than typological relationship to Christianity’s Jewish origins, and how its compilation in Sammelbände with John Cotta’s 1616 The Trial of Witchcraft reveals the conceptual incapacities of Christian political theology that demand both the existence and supersession of Jews to navigate Protestantism’s newly historical sense of its past.