Download or read book Incombustible Lutheran Books in Early Modern Germany written by Avner Shamir and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2019-01-16 with total page 294 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book discusses the early modern engagement with books that survived intentional or accidental fire in Lutheran Germany. From the 1620s until the middle of the eighteenth century, unburnt books became an attraction for princes, publishers, clergymen, and some laymen. To cope with an event that seemed counter-intuitive and possibly supernatural, contemporaries preserved these books, narrated their survival, and discussed their significance. This book demonstrates how early modern Europeans, no longer bound to traditional medieval religion, yet not accustomed to modern scientific ways of thinking, engaged with a natural phenomenon that was not uncommon and yet seemed to defy common sense.

Download or read book The Peace of Augsburg and the Meckhart Confession written by Adam Glen Hough and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2019-03-06 with total page 317 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Taking the religiously diverse city of Augsburg as its focus, this book explores the underappreciated role of local clergy in mediating and interpreting the Peace of Augsburg in the decades following its 1555 enactment, focusing on the efforts of the preacher Johann Meckhart and his heirs in blunting the cultural impact of confessional religion. It argues that the real drama of confessionalization was not simply that which played out between princes and theologians, or even, for that matter, between religions; rather, it lay in the daily struggle of clerics in the proverbial trenches of their ministry, who were increasingly pressured to choose for themselves and for their congregations between doctrinal purity and civil peace.

Download or read book Social and Cultural Relations in the Grand Duchy of Lithuania written by Richard Butterwick and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2019-04-05 with total page 257 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Grand Duchy of Lithuania was one of the largest and most linguistically, ethnically and religiously diverse polities in late medieval and early modern Europe. In the mid-1380s the Grand Duchy of Lithuania entered into a long process of union with the Kingdom of Poland. Since the destruction of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth in 1795, the history and memory of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania have been much contested among its successor nations. This volume aims to excavate a level below their largely incompatible narratives. Instead, in an encounter with freshly discovered or long neglected sources, the authors of this book seek new understanding of the Grand Duchy, its citizens and inhabitants in "microhistories." Emphasizing urban and rural spaces, families, communities, networks, and travels, this book presents fresh research by established and emerging scholars.

Download or read book Spain Rumor and Anti Catholicism in Mid Jacobean England written by Calvin F. Senning and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2019-05-31 with total page 396 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Geoffrey Parker has remarked that the Spanish Armada, though a disastrous defeat, was a considerable psychological success. Deep into the seventeenth century the specter of a returning armada haunted England. Twice in the middle of James I’s reign alarms occurred. One grew out of the king’s plan, opposed by Spain, to marry his daughter Elizabeth to the Calvinist elector of the Palatinate. The other derived from a rekindling of the disputed succession in the Cleves-Jülich duchies in the lower Rhineland, into which Spanish forces intervened militarily, while England suspected the formation of a large Spanish-led Catholic league, seemingly bent on invasion, which caused a few days of panic in London. Both scares were based on misinformation and rumor, worsened by longstanding English anxiety over Spanish designs and doubts about the loyalty of English Catholics, the persecution of whom intensified. The latter scare occasioned the appearance in London of a satirical print, long thought in England to be lost, of James holding the pope’s nose to the grindstone, but a copy sent to Madrid by the Spanish ambassador has survived, and, reproduced here, preserves what appears to be the oldest known example of English political satire in the print medium.

Download or read book Mediating Religious Cultures in Early Modern Europe written by Torrance Kirby and published by Cambridge Scholars Publishing. This book was released on 2014-07-03 with total page 302 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In recent years, writing on early-modern culture has turned from examining the upheavals of the Reformation as the ruptured birth of early modernity out of the late medieval towards a striking emphasis on processes of continuity, transition, and adaptation. No longer is the ‘religious’ seen as institutional or doctrinaire, but rather as a cultural and social phenomenon that exceeds the rigid parameters of modern definition. Recent analyses of early-modern cultures offer nuanced accounts that move beyond the limits of traditional historiography, and even the bounds of religious studies. At their centre is recognition that the scope of the religious can never be extricated from early-modern culture. Despite its many conflicts and tensions, the lingua franca for cultural self-understanding of the early-modern period remains ineluctably religious. The early-modern world wrestled with the radical challenges concerning the nature of belief within the confines of church or worship, but also beyond them. This process of negotiation was complex and fuelled European social dynamics. Without religion we cannot begin to comprehend the myriad facets of early-modern life, from markets, to new forms of art, to public and private associations. In discussions of images, the Eucharist, suicide, music, street lighting, or whether or not the sensible natural world represented an otherworldly divine, religion was the fundamental preoccupation of the age. Yet, even in contexts where unbelief might be considered, we find the religious providing the fundamental terminology for explicating the secular theories and views which sought to undermine it as a valid aspect of human life. This collection of essays takes up these themes in diverse ways. We move from the 15th century to the 18th, from the core problem of sacramental mediation of the divine within the strict parameters of eucharistic and devotional life, through discussion of images and iconoclasm, music and word, to more blurred contexts of death, street life, and atheism. Throughout the early-modern period, the very processes of adaption – even change itself – were framed by religious concepts and conceits.

Download or read book Popular Culture and Popular Movements in Reformation Germany written by R. W. Scribner and published by Bloomsbury Publishing. This book was released on 1988-07-01 with total page 379 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Reformation has traditionally been explained in terms of theology, the corruption of the church and the role of princes. R.W. Scribner, while not denying the importance of these, shifts the context of study of the German Reformation to an examination of popular beliefs and behaviour, and of the reactions of local authorities to the problems and opportunities for social as well as religious reform. This book brings together a coherent body of work that has appeared since 1975, including two entirely new essays and two previously published only in German.

Download or read book How the English Reformation Was Named written by Benjamin M. Guyer and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2022-07-07 with total page 235 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: How the English Reformation was Named analyses the shifting semantics of 'reformation' in England between the fifteenth and seventeenth centuries. Originally denoting the intended aim of church councils, 'reformation' was subsequently redefined to denote violent revolt, and ultimately a series of past episodes in religious history. But despite referring to sixteenth-century religious change, the proper noun 'English Reformation' entered the historical lexicon only during the British civil wars of the 1640s. Anglican apologists coined this term to defend the Church of England against proponents of the Scottish Reformation, an event that contemporaries singled out for its violence and illegality. Using their neologism to denote select events from the mid-Tudor era, Anglicans crafted a historical narrative that enabled them to present a pristine vision of the English past, one that endeavoured to preserve amidst civil war, regicide, and political oppression. With the restoration of the monarchy and the Church of England in 1660, apologetic narrative became historiographical habit and, eventually, historical certainty.

Download or read book Broadsheets written by Andrew Pettegree and published by BRILL. This book was released on 2017-07-10 with total page 564 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This volume offers an expansive survey of the role of single-sheet publishing in the European print industry during the first two centuries after the invention of printing. Drawing on new materials made available during the compilation of the Universal Short Title Catalogue, the twenty contributors explore the extraordinary range of broadsheet publishing and its contribution to government, pedagogy, religious devotion and entertainment culture. Long disregarded as ephemera or cheap print, broadsheets emerge both as a crucial communication medium and an essential underpinning of the economics of the publishing industry.

Download or read book Lucas Cranach written by Jennifer Nelson and published by Reaktion Books. This book was released on 2024-06-05 with total page 229 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A revealing new account of the life and work of this early modern German printmaker. This captivating biography brings Lucas Cranach the Elder into the spotlight for the twenty-first century. The illuminating narrative unveils an artist whose vision transcended personal brilliance, seeking rather to elevate his nascent nation. Perhaps Cranach’s most remarkable achievement lay in forging a robust Lutheran community around his work. Using prints, the prevailing medium of mass communication, he developed an intricate symbolism that resonated with the populace in early modern Germany. On the other hand, Cranach also produced many paintings of female nudes, which this book returns to their central place in the artist’s life as symbols of Germany’s rich cultural connections with ancient Greece and Rome.

Download or read book Salvation at Stake written by Brad S. Gregory and published by Harvard University Press. This book was released on 2001-11-15 with total page 545 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Thousands of men and women were executed for incompatible religious views in sixteenth-century Europe. The meaning and significance of those deaths are studied here comparatively for the first time, providing a compelling argument for the importance of martyrdom as both a window onto religious sensibilities and a crucial component in the formation of divergent Christian traditions and identities. Brad S. Gregory explores Protestant, Catholic, and Anabaptist martyrs in a sustained fashion, addressing the similarities and differences in their self-understanding. He traces the processes and impact of their memorialization by co-believers, and he reconstructs the arguments of the ecclesiastical and civil authorities responsible for their deaths. In addition, he assesses the controversy over the meaning of executions for competing views of Christian truth, and the intractable dispute over the distinction between true and false martyrs. He employs a wide range of sources, including pamphlets, martyrologies, theological and devotional treatises, sermons, songs, woodcuts and engravings, correspondence, and legal records. Reconstructing religious motivation, conviction, and behavior in early modern Europe, Gregory shows us the shifting perspectives of authorities willing to kill, martyrs willing to die, martyrologists eager to memorialize, and controversialists keen to dispute.

Download or read book Magistrates Madonnas and Miracles written by Trevor Johnson and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2016-12-05 with total page 502 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In 1621, in one of the earliest campaigns of the Thirty Years' War, the South German principality of the Upper Palatinate was invaded and annexed by Maximilian of Bavaria, director of the Catholic League. In the subsequent years the eyes of Europe looked to the fate of this erstwhile hub of the 'Calvinist international', as Maximilian steadily moved to convert its population to Catholicism. This study is the first account in English to focus on this important instance of forced conversion and the first account in any language to place the political impact of the Thirty Years' War into the broader context of the Upper-Palatinate's religious culture examined over the longue durée, from the later sixteenth to the mid-eighteenth centuries. The book analyses the rich unpublished sources of church and state from Bavarian and Roman archives, as well as printed texts in varied genres to reconstruct the region's sacred system and to gauge the effectiveness of the campaign of conversion. This allows the study to address questions of how the re-catholicisation was achieved, how a religious culture infused with the spirit of the Counter Reformation developed and how this change shaped the identity of its people. More than this, however, the book also uses the Upper Palatinate case-study to draw broader conclusions about the strengths and limitations of the Confessional model, and suggests other ways of looking at religious change and identity formation in early modern Europe which embraces popular religious culture and voluntary religion, as well coercion. As such the book offers much, not only to scholars of early modern Germany, but to all with an interest in the formation, adoption and imposition of religious identity during this period.

Download or read book The Reformation and the Irrepressible Word of God written by Scott M. Manetsch and published by InterVarsity Press. This book was released on 2019-05-28 with total page 256 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Protestant Reformers were transformed by their encounters with Scripture. Bringing together the reflections of church historians and theologians delivered at Trinity Evangelical Divinity School, these essays consider historical, hermeneutical, theological, and practical issues regarding the Bible, revealing that the irrepressible Word of God continues to transform hearts and minds.

Download or read book Luther Conflict and Christendom written by Christopher Ocker and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2018-09-17 with total page 540 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Martin Luther - monk, priest, intellectual, or revolutionary - has been a controversial figure since the sixteenth century. Most studies of Luther stress his personality, his ideas, and his ambitions as a church reformer. In this book, Christopher Ocker brings a new perspective to this topic, arguing that the different ways people thought about Luther mattered far more than who he really was. Providing an accessible, highly contextual, and non-partisan introduction, Ocker says that religious conflict itself served as the engine of religious change. He shows that the Luther affair had a complex political anatomy which extended far beyond the borders of Germany, making the debate an international one from the very start. His study links the Reformation to pluralism within western religion and to the coexistence of religions and secularism in today's world. Luther, Conflict, and Christendom includes a detailed chronological chart.

Download or read book Reformation written by Diarmaid MacCulloch and published by Penguin UK. This book was released on 2004-09-02 with total page 1195 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Reformation was the seismic event in European history over the past 1000 years, and one which tore the medieval world apart. Not just European religion, but thought, culture, society, state systems, personal relations - everything - was turned upside down. Just about everything which followed in European history can be traced back in some way to the Reformation and the Counter-Reformation which it provoked. The Reformation is where the modern world painfully and dramatically began, and MacCulloch's great history of it is recognised as the best modern account.

Download or read book Catholic Reformation in Protestant Britain written by Alexandra Walsham and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2016-04-15 with total page 509 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The survival and revival of Roman Catholicism in post-Reformation Britain remains the subject of lively debate. This volume examines key aspects of the evolution and experience of the Catholic communities of these Protestant kingdoms during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Rejecting an earlier preoccupation with recusants and martyrs, it highlights the importance of those who exhibited varying degrees of conformity with the ecclesiastical establishment and explores the moral and political dilemmas that confronted the clergy and laity. It reassesses the significance of the Counter Reformation mission as an evangelical enterprise; analyses its communication strategies and its impact on popular piety; and illuminates how Catholic ritual life creatively adapted itself to a climate of repression. Reacting sharply against the insularity of many previous accounts, this book investigates developments in the British Isles in relation to wider international initiatives for the renewal of the Catholic faith in Europe and for its plantation overseas. It emphasises the reciprocal interaction between Catholicism and anti-Catholicism throughout the period and casts fresh light on the nature of interconfessional relations in a pluralistic society. It argues that persecution and suffering paradoxically both constrained and facilitated the resurgence of the Church of Rome. They presented challenges and fostered internal frictions, but they also catalysed the process of religious identity formation and imbued English, Welsh and Scottish Catholicism with peculiar dynamism. Prefaced by an extensive new historiographical overview, this collection brings together a selection of Alexandra Walsham's essays written over the last fifteen years, fully revised and updated to reflect recent research in this flourishing field. Collectively these make a major contribution to our understanding of minority Catholicism and the Counter Reformation in the era after the Council of Trent.

Download or read book He is the Sun She is the Moon written by Heide Wunder and published by Harvard University Press. This book was released on 1998 with total page 332 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Renowned German social historian Heide Wunder refers to the cosmic image contained in the 1578 Book of Marital Discipline that characterizes the relationship between husband and wife. Today, "He is the sun, she is the moon" might be interpreted as a hierarchy of dominance and subordination. At the time it was used, however, sun and moon reflected the different but equal status of husband and wife. Wunder shows how the history of women and the history of gender relations can provide crucial insights into how societies organize themselves and provide resources for political action. She observes actual circumstances as well as the normative rules that were supposed to guide women's lives. We learn what skills were necessary to take charge of households, what people ate, how they furnished their homes, what birth control measures were available, what role women played in peasant protest. Wunder finds that, in addition to the history of losses and setbacks for women observed by so many current interpreters, there is a history of gains as well. The regency of noble women was normal, as was the shared responsibility of wife and husband in a peasant household, an artisan's workshop, or a merchant's business. Using sources as diverse as memoirs, wedding and funeral sermons, novels, and chronicles, and including a wealth of demographic information, Wunder reveals a surprising new image of early modern women and provides a richer interpretation of early modern Europe.

Download or read book Material Christianity written by Christopher Ocker and published by Springer Nature. This book was released on 2020-02-26 with total page 262 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This collection of essays offers a series of rigorously focused art-historical, historical, and philosophical studies that examine ways in which materiality has posed and still poses a religious and cultural problem. The volume examines the material agency of objects, artifacts, and environments: art, ritual, pilgrimage, food, and philosophy. It studies the variable "senses” of materiality, the place of materiality in the formation of modern Western religion, and its role in Christianity’s dialogue with non-Western religions. The essays present new interpretations of religious rites and outlooks through the focus on their material components. They also suggest how material engagement theory - a new movement in cultural anthropology and archeology - may shed light on the cultural history of Christianity in medieval and early modern Europe and the Americas. It thus fills an important lacuna in the study of western religion by highlighting the longue durée, from the Middles Ages to the Modern Period, of a current dilemma, namely the divide between materialistic and what might broadly be called hermeneutical or cultural-critical approaches to religion and human subjectivity.