The Baroque period stretched from the end of the 16th to the second half of the 17th century. In this book, 13 scholars develop a portrait of institutions, ideologies, intellectual themes and social structures as they are reflected in Baroque personae, or characteristic social roles. Studying the statesman, soldier, financier, secretary, rebel, preacher, missionary, nun, witch, scientist, artist and bourgeois, the essays depart dramatically from traditional accounts of this era. The statesman, for example, is seen here as the exact opposite of a benevolent man working for the common good; and the soldier is depicted as part of an institution that could be savage and destructive but that also, by the end of the Baroque age, helped shape a more rational relationship with the military and civil society.