... they contributed to the exchange and translation of knowledge and ideas. This special issue considers issues of reading and writing before, during, and after medieval pilgrimages, as well as the methodological and historical issues at stake for both pilgrim writers and modern scholars. In particular, the articles...

.... In this special issue of JMEMS , essays explore the ways in which monastic foundations are complexly imbricated in their local communities as well as in far-reaching political, economic, and textual systems. One of the aims of this issue is thus to use the topic of monasticism to rethink a variety of boundaries...

...Shannon Gayk; Robyn Malo This special issue of the Journal of Medieval and Early Modern Studies explores the many continuities between medieval and early modern ideas about the sacred object. Until recently, the European Protestant Reformations were usually understood to mark a sharp break...

...Valeria Finucci This special issue of JMEMS addresses different ways of thinking through death and dying in the medieval and early modern period, including different philosophical and legal positions concerning the relationships between the body and its parts, corpses and burial sites, the bodies...

...Juliet Fleming The essays gathered in this special issue of JMEMS describe processes of cutting, dismantling, and reassembling printed books in the early modern period. This focus on “collage” techniques in bookmaking should displace the commonsense understanding of the book as an undisturbed whole...

...Marion Turner Medical language permeated all kinds of texts in premodern Europe, including legal, literary, devotional, political, autobiographical, and philosophical writings. The essays in this special issue are particularly interested in the functions of metaphor and of narrative. Many thinkers...

... affirmation and passionate opposition. This special issue contributes to ongoing discussion of issues raised in The Unintended Reformation that many in today's universities feel are crucial to debate. © 2016 by Duke University Press 2016 This content is made freely available by the publisher. It may...

... and the corresponding issue of power struggle within church and state; (2) the discovery of the “racial and religious” other and the resultant issues endemic to Spanish colonialism, which had the unintended effect of vitiating the fabric of Catholicism's credibility; (3) the significance of immigration and refugee...

...István M. Szijártó This epilogue to the special issue of JMEMS , “Microhistory and the Historical Imagination: New Frontiers,” comments on the essays, which trace the frontiers of microhistory. While they embrace the essence of microhistorical practice in their commitment to microanalysis, agency...

...Jeffrey Alan Miller The part played by the Geneva Bible in the composition of the King James Version (1611) has been a vexed issue from the very commissioning of the King James translation in 1604. This essay sheds new light on the issue by focusing in detail on two extant drafts of the King James...

.... But if this is the first port of call, such analysis quickly draws in questions about the relationship between reception and production, audience and agency, about contemporary and posthumous reputation. This special issue investigates the ways in which the act of reception is a reiterative process on a continuous...

...Jane Yeang Chui Wong The publication in 2008 of John Watkins’s special issue for the Journal of Medieval and Early Modern Studies , “Toward a New Diplomatic History of Medieval and Early Modern Europe,” opened up the formal aspects of the ambassador’s office and official channels of diplomatic...

...Carol Symes As an afterword to the special issue of JMEMS “Performance beyond Drama,” this essay reflects on the complex ways that premodern performances and their embodied actors are captured in, mediated by, or dependent on the texts that we use to study them, and on the special importance...

...Ineke Murakami; Donovan Sherman The field of performance studies has invigorated premodern scholarship by directing critical attention to live, ephemeral events that unsettle the textual archive. This special issue of JMEMS builds on this work by stepping away from the usual emphasis on theater...

...Shannon Gayk; Evelyn Reynolds This special issue considers how depictions of premodern catastrophe—environmental, social, political—shape and are shaped by literary form. The issue's introduction explores what form has to do with catastrophe and offers a case study of how form moves in a Middle...

... play well through disciplined habits of exercise. In Alasdair MacIntyre's extraordinary excavations of philosophy and intellectual history, the Reformation is by and large neglected as he traces a path from Aristotle to Hume and beyond. This special issue seeks to put the Reformation(s) back...

... adjacent disciplines. The introduction to the special issue “Intention and Interpretation, Now and Then” maps the prime features of the intellectual landscape concerning intention and literary criticism in Anglo-American and French traditions since the late eighteenth century. It then highlights the losses...

... issue analyze a number of issues of particular importance to the current study of premodern medicine. These include the uses and misrepresentations of long-standing paradigms for the interpretation of disease, such as the theory of humoralism, as well as the Hippocratic Airs, Waters, and Places...

...Mary Lindemann Scholars of medical history have discovered that the notion of “monstrous births” presented challenging legal issues in the early modern world. Were such offspring–often conjoined twins– “monsters” in the civil sense? Were they, for example, able to make a will, inherit, contract...

...David Aers; Nigel Smith This special issue is devoted to the English Reformations and current historiography. The title intentionally pluralizes the traditionally singular noun Reformation to signify a scope that includes both the early Reformation (through to 1547) and continuing senses...