Roland H. Bainton Prizes

Roland H. Bainton, 1894 - 1984, was the Titus Street Professor of Ecclesiastical History at Yale University, the advisor of many Ph.D. students, the author of over a dozen important books, including the now classic Here I Stand (1954). He was an ardent supporter of early modern studies and was president of the Center for Reformation Research the year the Sixteenth Century Society was planned at a meeting of the Center’s advisory board. 

Four prizes are awarded yearly for the best books written in English dealing with four categories within the time frame of the Early Modern Era (1450-1750): Art and Music History, History and Theology, Literature, and Reference Works. The prize-winning book in each category is chosen by a committee of three Society members. 

Criteria for selection shall include: 

  1. quality and originality of research 

  2. methodological skill and/or innovation 

  3. development of fresh and stimulating interpretations or insights 

  4. literary quality 

Nominations for the prize may be made by anyone, including authors. Nominations should be sent to the Executive Director (director@sixteenthcentury.org), who will then send contact information for the committee members. A copy of the nominated work, either in hard copy or electronic form, should then be sent no later than 1 April.

The books to be considered for the prize will be those books published within the preceding calendar year. Anthologies and collections of essays will not be accepted, except in the reference category.

If you wish to help support the Bainton Prizes, please donate here. To learn more about Professor Bainton, please click here.

Past Winners: 

2023

  • History and Theology: Marjorie Elizabeth Plummer, Stripping the Veil: Convent Reform, Protestant Nuns, and Female Devotional Life in Sixteenth-Century German (Oxford University Press) 2022

  • Literature: Douglas S. Pfeiffer, Authorial Personality and the Making of Renaissance Texts: The Force of Character (Oxford University Press) 2022

  • Reference: Elizabeth Scott-Baumann, Danielle Clark, and Sarah C.E. Ross (eds.), The Oxford Handbook of Early Modern Women’s Writing in English, 1540-1700 (Oxford University Press) 2022

  • Art and Music History: Walter S. Melion, Karel van Mander and his Foundation of the Noble, Free Art of Painting (Brill) 2022

2022

  • History and Theology: Alisha Rankin, Poison Trials: Wonder Drugs, Experiment, and the Battle for Authority in Renaissance Science (University of Chicago Press) 2021

  • Literature: Lena Cowen Orlin: The Private Life of William Shakespeare (Oxford University Press) 2021

  • Reference: Bernd Renner, A Companion to François Rabelais (Brill) 2021

  • Art and Music History: Andrew R. Casper, An Artful Relic: The Shroud of Turin in Baroque Italy (Penn State University Press) 2021

2021

  • History and Theology: Magda Teeter, Blood Libel: On the Trail of an Antisemitic Myth (Harvard University Press) 2020

  • Literature: Helen Moore, Amadis in English (Oxford University Press) 2020

  • Reference: Malcolm Walsby, Booksellers and Printers in Provincial France, 1470-1600 (Brill) 2020

  • Art and Music: Paula Hohti Erichsen, Artisans, Objects, and Everyday Life in Renaissance Italy: The Material Culture of the Middling Class (Amsterdam University Press) 2020

2020

  • History and Theology: Erin Rowe, Black Saints in Early Modern Global Catholicism(Cambridge University Press, 2019)

  • Literature: Scott A. Trudell, Unwritten Poetry: Song, Performance, and Media in Early Modern England (Oxford University Press, 2019)

  • Reference: Two Prizes Were Awarded:

  • R. Ward Holder (ed.) John Calvin in Context (Cambridge University Press, 2019), and 

  • Pamela M. Jones, Barbara Wisch, and Simon Ditchfield (eds.) A Companion to Early Modern Rome, 1492-1692 (Brill, 2019)

  • Art and Music History: Marisa Anne Bass, Insect Artifice: Nature and Art in the Dutch Revolt(Princeton University Press, 2019)

2019

  • History and Theology: Abigail Brundin, Deborah Howard, and Mary Laven, for their co-authored book The Sacred Home in Renaissance Italy

  • Literature: Anna-Maria Hartmann,  English Mythography in the European Context, 1500-1650 (Oxford University Press)

  • Art and Music History: Lori Boornazian Diel, The Codex Mexicanus: A Guide to Life in Late Sixteenth-Century New Spain (The University of Texas Press, 2018) 

  • Reference: Egbertus van Gulik, (ed.) Erasmus and His Books (The University of Toronto Press) 

2018 

  • History and Theology: Sam White, Ohio State University.  A Cold Welcome: The Little Ice Age and Europe’s Encounter with North America (Harvard University Press, 2017) 

  • Literature: Tanya Pollard, Brooklyn College and the Graduate Center, City University of New York. Greek Tragic Women on Shakespearean Stages (Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 2017).  

  • Art and Music History: Susanna Berger, University of Southern California.  The Art of Philosophy: Visual Thinking in Europe from the Late Renaissance to the Early Enlightenment (Princeton University Press). 

  • Reference: Hutson, Lorna (ed.).  The Oxford Handbook of English Law and Literature, 1500-1700. (Oxford and NY: Oxford University Press). 

2017 

  • History and Theology:  Surekha Davies, Renaissance Ethnography and the Invention of the Human: New Worlds, Maps and Monsters  (Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press, 2016).  Honorable Mention: David Luebke, Hometown Religion: Regimes of Coexistence in Early Modern Westphalia (Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press).  

  • Literature: John Kerrigan, Shakespeare’s Binding Language (Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press) 

  • Art and Music History: not awarded 

  • Reference:  Valerie Traub, The Oxford Handbook of Shakespeare and Embodiment (Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press) 

2016 

  • History and Theology: Robin Barnes, Astrology and Reformation (Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press) 

  • Literature: Christopher Warren, Literature and the Law of Nations, 1580-1680 (Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press) 

  • Art and Music History: Katelijne Schiltz, Music and Riddle Culture in the Renaissance (Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press) 

  • Reference: Kevin Killeen, Helen Smith, Rachel Willie, The Oxford Handbook of the Bible in Early Modern England, c. 1530-1700 (Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press) 

2015 

  • History and Theology: Regina Harrison, Sin & Confession in Colonial Peru: Spanish-Quechua penitential Texts, 1560-1650 (Austin: University of Texas Press) 

  • Literature: Michael Murrin, Trade and Romance (Chicago: University of Chicago Press) 

  • Art and Music History: Elizabeth Goldring, Robert Dudley, Earl of Leicester, and the World of Elizabethan Art (New Haven: Yale University Press) 

  • Reference: Elizabeth Goldring, Faith Eales, Elizabeth Clarke, and Jayne Elisabeth Archer, John Nichols’s The Progresses and Public Processions of Queen Elizabeth: a New Edition of the Early Modern Sources (Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press) 

2014 

  • History and Theology: Sandra Cavallo and Tessa Storey, Healthy Living in Late Renaissance Italy (Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press) 

  • Literature: Carmen Nocentelli, Empires of Love: Europe, Asia and the Making of Early Modern Identity (University Park, PA: University of Pennsylvania Press) 

  • Art and Music History: Sarah Blake McHam, Pliny and the Artistic Culture of the Italian Renaissance: the Legacy of the “Natural History” (New Haven: Yale University Press) 

  • Reference: Tom Cain and Ruth Connolly, The Complete Poetry of Robert Herrick (Oxford University Press) 

2013 

  • History and Theology: Paul Lim, Mystery Unveiled (Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press) 

  • Literature: Helen Smith, Grossly Material Things (Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press) 

  • Art and Music History: Angela Vanhaelen, The Wake of Iconoclasm (University Park, PA: Pennsylvania State University Press) 

  • Reference: Roger Kuin, ed., The Correspondence of Sir Philip Sidney (Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press) 

2012 

  • History and Theology: Alexandra Walsham, The Reformation of the Landscape: Religion, Identity, and Memory in Early Modern Britain and Ireland (Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press) 

  • Literature: Andreas Hofele, Stage, Stake, and Scaffold: Humans and Animals in Shakespeare’s Theatre (Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press) 

  • Art and Music History: Susan Dackerman, Prints and the Pursuit of Knowledge in Early Modern Europe (Cambridge, MA: Harvard Art Museum) 

  • Reference: Joad Raymond, The Oxford History of Popular Print Culture: Cheap Print in Britain and Ireland to 1660 (Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press) 

2011 

  • History and Theology: Ulinka Rublack, Dressing Up: Cultural History in Renaissance Europe (Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press) 

  • Literature: Joad Raymond, Milton’s Angels: The Early-Modern Imagination (Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press) 

  • Art and Music History: Stephanie Leitch, Mapping Ethnography in Early Modern Germany: New Worlds in Print Culture (New York: Palgrave Macmillan) 

  • Reference: Hilaire Kallendorf, ed., The New Companion to Hispanic Mysticism (Leiden: Brill) 

2010 

  • History and Theology: Joel Harrington, The Unwanted Child: The Fate of Foundings, Orphans, and Juvenile Criminals in Early Modern Germany, 1450-1660 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press) 

  • Literature: Carla Mazzio, The Inarticulate Renaissance: Language Trouble in an Age of Eloquence (University Park, PA: University of Pennsylvania Press) 

  • Art and Music History: Shelley Perlove and Larry Silver, Rembrandt’s Faith: Church and Temple in the Dutch Golden Age (University Park, PA: Pennsylvania State University Press) 

  • Reference: Michael Pincombe and Cathy Shrank, The Oxford Handbook of Tudor Literature (Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press) 

2009 

  • History and Theology: Alison Games, The Web of Empire: English Cosmopolitans in an Age of Expansion, 1560-1660 (Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press) 

  • Literature: Jennifer Summit, Memory’s Library: Medieval Books in Early Modern England (Chicago: University of Chicago Press)  

  • Art and Music History: Karen Bowen and Dirk Imhof, Christopher Plantin and Engraved Book Illustrations in Sixteenth-Century Europe (Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press) 

Reference: 

2008 

  • History and Theology: Sara Beam, Laughing Matters: Farce and the Making of Absolutism in France (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press). Honorable Mention: Charles Zika, The Appearance of Witchcraft: Print and Visual Culture in Sixteenth-Century Europe (London and New York: Routledge) 

  • Literature: Lorna Hutson, The Invention of Suspicion: Law and Mimesis in Shakespeare and Renaissance Drama (Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press). Honorable Mention: Bradin Cormack, A Power to Do Justice: Jurisdiction, English Literature, and the Rise of Common Law (Chicago: University of Chicago Press) 

  • Art and Music History: Thomas P. Campbell, Henry VIII and the Art of Majesty. Tapestries at the Tudor Court (New Haven: Yale University Press) 

  • Reference: Diana Robin, Anne R. Larsen, and Carole Levin, eds., Encyclopedia of Women in the Renaissance. Italy, France, and England (Santa Barbara, CA: ABC-CLIO) 

2007 

  • History and Theology: Valerie Kivelson, Cartographies of Tsardom: The Land and Its Meanings in Seventeenth-Century Russia (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press) 

  • Literature: Robert Appelbaum, Aguecheek’s Beef, Belch’s Hicup, and Other Gastronomic Interjections: Literature, Culture, and Food among the Early Moderns (Chicago: University of Chicago Press).  Honorable Mention: Debora Shuger, Censorship and Cultural Sensibility: The Regulation of Language in Tudor-Stuart England (University Park, PA: University of Pennsylvania Press) 

  • Art and Music History: Larry Silver, Peasant Scenes and Landscapes; The Rise of Pictorial Genres in the Antwerp Art Market (University Park, PA: University of Pennsylvania Press) 

  • Reference: Richard M. Golden, ed., The Encyclopedia of Witchcraft (Santa Barbara, CA: ABC-CLIO) 

2006 

  • History and Theology: Allyson M. Poska, Women and Authority in Early Modern Spain: The Peasants of Galicia (Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press).  Honorable Mention: Linda Levy Peck, Consuming Splendor: Society and Culture in Seventeenth-Century England (Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press) 

  • Literature: Andrew Hadfield, Shakespeare and Republicanism (Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press) 

  • Art and Music History: Bronwen Wilson, The World in Venice: Print, the City and Early Modern Identity (University of Toronto Press) 

  • Reference: Joseph Rosenblum, ed., The Greenwood Companion to Shakespeare: A Comprehensive Guide for Students (Greenwood Press) 

2005

  • History and Theology: Lyndal Roper, Witch Craze: Terror and Fantasy in Baroque Germany (New Haven: Yale University Press).  Honorable Mention: Govind Sreenivasan, The Peasants of Ottobeuren, 1487-1726 (Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press) 

  • Literature: Deanne Williams, The French Fetish from Shakespeare to Chaucer (Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press) 

  • Art and Music History: Joseph Herl, Worship Wars in Early Lutheranism: Choir, Congregation, and Three Centuries of Conflict (Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press) 

  • Reference: Robert Tittler, Norman Jones, eds., A Companion to Tudor Britain (Malden, MA and Oxford: Blackwell) 

  • 2004

  • History and Theology: Francis Oakley, The Conciliarist Tradition (Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press) 

  • Literature: Margaret Ferguson, Dido’s Daughters: Literacy, Gender, and Empire in Early Modern England and France (Chicago: University of Chicago Press) 

  • Art and Music History: Filip Vermeylen, Painting for the Market: Commercialization of Art in Antwerp’s Golden Age (Turnhout: Brepols) 

  • Reference: Jonathan Dewald, Europe, 1450-1789: Encyclopedia of the Early Modern World (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons) 

2003 

  • History and Theology: Ethan Shagan, Popular Politics and the English Reformation (Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press) 

  • Literature: Jeffrey Knapp, Shakespeare’s Tribe: Church, Nation, and Theater in Renaissance England (Chicago: University of Chicago Press) 

  • Art and Music History: Jeffrey Chipps Smith, Sensuous Worship: Jesuits and the Art of the Early Catholic Reformation in Germany (Princeton: Princeton University Press)