Magistrates, Madonnas and Miracles

Magistrates, Madonnas and Miracles
Author: Trevor Johnson
Publisher: Ashgate Publishing, Ltd.
Total Pages: 382
Release: 2009
Genre: History
ISBN: 9780754664802

This book weaves together a narrative of events in the South German principality of the Upper Palatinate with an examination of the structural transformations within the religious culture from the early seventeenth century to the mid-eighteenth. Drawing both upon developments in the historiography of early modern religion over the last twenty years, and a wealth of documentary sources, this study assesses the main conversion strategies utilised over a one-hundred year period, which ultimately lead to the re-catholicisation of the Upper Palatinate.

Magistrates, Madonnas and Miracles

Magistrates, Madonnas and Miracles
Author: Trevor Johnson
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 502
Release: 2016-12-05
Genre: History
ISBN: 1351920987

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 The book analyses the rich unpublished sources of church and state from Bavarian and Roman archives, as well as printed texts in varied genres to reconstruct the region's sacred system and to gauge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.

Crossing the Boundaries of Belief

Crossing the Boundaries of Belief
Author: Duane J. Corpis
Publisher: University of Virginia Press
Total Pages: 445
Release: 2014-06-03
Genre: History
ISBN: 0813935539

In early modern Germany, religious conversion was a profoundly social and political phenomenon rather than purely an act of private conscience. Because social norms and legal requirements demanded that every subject declare membership in one of the state-sanctioned Christian churches, the act of religious conversion regularly tested the geographical and political boundaries separating Catholics and Protestants. In a period when church and state cooperated to impose religious conformity, regulate confessional difference, and promote moral and social order, the choice to convert was seen as a disruptive act of disobedience. Investigating the tensions inherent in the creation of religious communities and the fashioning of religious identities in Germany after the Thirty Years' War, Duane Corpis examines the complex social interactions, political implications, and cultural meanings of conversion in this moment of German history. In Crossing the Boundaries of Belief, Corpis assesses how conversion destabilized the rigid political, social, and cultural boundaries that separated one Christian faith from another and that normally tied individuals to their local communities of belief. Those who changed their faiths directly challenged the efforts of ecclesiastical and secular authorities to use religious orthodoxy as a tool of social discipline and control. In its examination of religious conversion, this study thus offers a unique opportunity to explore how women and men questioned and redefined their relationships to local institutions of power and authority, including the parish clergy, the city government, and the family.

The Church in the Early Modern Age

The Church in the Early Modern Age
Author: C. Scott Dixon
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
Total Pages: 271
Release: 2016-03-24
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 0857727125

The years 1450-1650 were a momentous period for the development of Christianity. They witnessed the age of Reformation and Counter-Reformation: perhaps the most important era for the shaping of the faith since its foundation. C Scott Dixon explores how the ideas that went into the making of early modern Christianity re-oriented the Church to such an extent that they gave rise to new versions of the religion. He shows how the varieties and ambivalences of late medieval theology were now replaced by dogmatic certainties, where the institutions of Christian churches became more effective and 'modern', staffed by well-trained clergy. Tracing these changes from the fall of Constantinople to the end of the Thirty Years' War, and treating the High Renaissance and the Reformation as part of the same overall narrative, the author offers an integrated approach to widely different national, social and cultural histories. Moving beyond Protestant and Catholic conflicts, he contrasts Western Christianity with Eastern Orthodoxy, and examines the Church's response to fears of Ottoman domination.

Reformations Compared

Reformations Compared
Author: Henry A. Jefferies
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Total Pages: 303
Release: 2024-03-31
Genre: History
ISBN: 1009468596

Offers comparative perspectives and fresh insights into the unfolding of the Reformation across the whole of Europe.

The Oxford Handbook of the Protestant Reformations

The Oxford Handbook of the Protestant Reformations
Author: Ulinka Rublack
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Total Pages: 849
Release: 2017
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 0199646929

This handbook is currently in development, with individual articles publishing online in advance of print publication. At this time, we cannot add information about unpublished articles in this handbook, however the table of contents will continue to grow as additional articles pass through the review process and are added to the site. Please note that the online publication date for this handbook is the date that the first article in the title was published online

Catholic Reformation in Protestant Britain

Catholic Reformation in Protestant Britain
Author: Alexandra Walsham
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 509
Release: 2016-04-15
Genre: History
ISBN: 1317169247

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.

Commonwealth and the English Reformation

Commonwealth and the English Reformation
Author: Ben Lowe
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 291
Release: 2017-03-02
Genre: History
ISBN: 135195038X

Whilst much recent research has dealt with the popular response to the religious change ushered in during the mid-Tudor period, this book focuses not just on the response to broad liturgical and doctrinal change, but also looks at how theological and reform messages could be utilized among local leaders and civic elites. It is this cohort that has often been neglected in previous efforts to ascertain the often elusive position of the common woman or man. Using the Vale of Gloucester as a case study, the book refocuses attention onto the concept of "commonwealth" and links it to a gradual, but long-standing dissatisfaction with local religious houses. It shows how monasteries, endowed initially out of the charitable impulses of elites, increasingly came to depend on lay stewards to remain viable. During the economic downturn of the mid-Tudor period, when urban and landed elites refocused their attention on restoring the commonwealth which they believed had broken down, they increasingly viewed the charity offered by religious houses as insufficient to meet the local needs. In such a climate the Protestant social gospel seemed to provide a valid alternative to which many people gravitated. Holding to scrutiny the revisionist revolution of the past twenty years, the book reopens debate and challenges conventional thinking about the ways the traditional church lost influence in the late middle ages, positing the idea that the problems with the religious houses were not just the creation of the reformers but had rather a long history. In so doing it offers a more complete picture of reform that goes beyond head-counting by looking at the political relationships and how they were affected by religious ideas to bring about change.

Baal's Priests

Baal's Priests
Author: Fiona McCall
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 411
Release: 2016-04-15
Genre: History
ISBN: 1317176499

The English Civil War was a time of disruption, suffering and persecution for many people, not least the clergy of the established church, who found themselves ejected from their livings in increasing numbers as Parliamentarian forces extended their control across the country. Yet, historians have tended to downplay their suffering, preferring in most cases to concentrate instead upon the persecution suffered by dissenters after the Restoration. Drawing upon an impressive array of sources - most notably the remarkable set of family and parish memories collected by John Walker in the early years of the eighteenth century - this book refocuses attention on the experiences of the sequestered loyalist clergy during the turbulent years of the 1640s and 1650s. The study highlights how the experiences of the clergy can help illuminate events in wider society, whilst at the same time acknowledging the unique situation in which Church of England ministers found themselves. For although the plundering, imprisonment and personal loss of the clergy was probably indicative of the experiences of many ordinary people on middle incomes, the ever present religious dimension to the conflict ensured particular attention was paid to those holding religious office. During the war and interregnum, zealous religious reformers attacked every aspect of established religion, targeting both existing institutions and those who supported them. Clergy were ejected on an unprecedented scale, suffering much violence and persecution and branded as 'malignants' and 'baal's priests'. By re-examining their history, the book offers a balanced assessment of the persecution, challenging many preconceptions about the ejected loyalists, and providing new insights into the experiences and legacies of this influential group.

Parish Churches in the Early Modern World

Parish Churches in the Early Modern World
Author: Andrew Spicer
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 471
Release: 2016-12-05
Genre: History
ISBN: 1351912763

Across Europe, the parish church has stood for centuries at the centre of local communities; it was the focal point of its religious life, the rituals performed there marked the stages of life from the cradle to the grave. Nonetheless the church itself artistically and architecturally stood apart from the parish community. It was often the largest and only stone-built building in a village; it was legally distinct being subject to canon law, as well as consecrated for the celebration of religious rites. The buildings associated with the "cure of souls" were sacred sites or holy places, where humanity interacted with the divine. In spite of the importance of the parish church, these buildings have generally not received the same attention from historians as non-parochial places of worship. This collection of essays redresses this balance and reflects on the parish church across a number of confessions - Catholic, Lutheran, Reformed and Anti-Trinitarian - during the early modern period. Rather than providing a series of case studies of individual buildings, each essay looks at the evolution of parish churches in response to religious reform as well as confessional change and upheaval. They examine aspects of their design and construction; furnishings and material culture; liturgy and the use of the parish church. While these essays range widely across Europe, the volume also considers how religious provision and the parish church were translated into a global context with colonial and commercial expansion in the Americas and Asia. This interdisciplinary volume seeks to identify what was distinctive about the parish church for the congregations that gathered in them for worship and for communities across the early modern world.