Protestantism, Poetry and Protest

Protestantism, Poetry and Protest
Author: S.K. Barker
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 331
Release: 2016-04-15
Genre: History
ISBN: 1317074165

Antoine de Chandieu (1534-1591) was a key figure in the establishment and development of the French Protestant Church. Of all its indigenous leaders, he was perhaps closest to Calvin, and took a leading role in all the major debates about resistance, church order and doctrine of the Church. He was also a prodigious writer of political, religious and poetical works, whose output corresponds to a period of great turmoil in the progress of the French Church. Chandieu was uniquely placed not merely to engage and contribute to the great debates of the day, but also to record ongoing events. By illuminating his career, which meshed almost exactly with the French Wars of Religion, this book not only demonstrates the key role Chandieu's played in the development of French Protestantism, but also highlights the vital role of literature in shaping the religious experience of the wars. Offering the first systematic evaluation of Chandieu's vernacular works, this study questions many of the assumptions made about his motivations and aims, and how these developed over a thirty year period. His writings were contemporaneous with progress in the worlds of politics, theology and poetry, worlds in which he played a notable, if not well-documented, role. As a corpus, these works show the development of one man's understanding of his ideology over a lifetime actively spent in the pursuit of making that ideology a reality. Chandieu the young political hothead became Chandieu the defender of Calvinist theology, who in turn matured into Chandieu the elder statesman. The interest lies in where these changes occurred, how they were reflected in Chandieu's writing, and what they demonstrate about being Calvinist, and a representative of one's faith, in a time of disorder. As such, this book provides not only a reappraisal of the man and his publications, but presents an intriguing perspective on the development of French Protestantism during this turbulent time.

1517

1517
Author: Peter Marshall
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Total Pages: 256
Release: 2017
Genre: Biography & Autobiography
ISBN: 0199682011

Did Martin Luther really post his 95 Theses to the Wittenberg Castle Church door in October 1517? Probably not, says Reformation historian Peter Marshall. But though the event might be mythic, it became one of the great defining episodes in Western history, a symbol of religious freedom of conscience which still shapes our world 500 years later.

Luther’s Lectures on Genesis and the Formation of Evangelical Identity

Luther’s Lectures on Genesis and the Formation of Evangelical Identity
Author: John A. Maxfield
Publisher: Penn State Press
Total Pages: 257
Release: 2008-09-24
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 0271091029

Martin Luther's lectures on Genesis, delivered at the University of Wittenberg during the last decade of his life and later published by his students, allow modern readers to view a sixteenth-century professor engaging his students with the text of scripture and using that text to form them spiritually. The lectures show how Luther attempted to form in his students a new identity, an Evangelical identity, enabling them to make sense of the rapidly changing society and church in which they were being prepared to serve, primarily as pastors in the developing territorial churches of the Reformation. This study uses the text of the lectures to outline the contours of the new identity that Luther laid out through his exposition of Genesis. They include how Luther approached and taught his students to perceive the text of holy scripture; how that text unveiled for Luther the nature of Christian life in the world; and how Luther taught his students to view the past, the present, and the future of the church and the world through the book of Genesis. Whether in the published editions of the lectures the historic Luther was actually misunderstood or was transformed in some way into the prophetic Luther of later memory, the text reveals the Luther that his students heard and subsequent generations read.

James Ussher

James Ussher
Author: Alan Ford
Publisher: OUP Oxford
Total Pages: 328
Release: 2007-06-21
Genre: History
ISBN: 0191534439

Though known today largely for dating the creation of the world to 4004BC, James Ussher (1581-1656) was an important scholar and ecclesiastical leader in the seventeenth century. As Professor of Theology at Trinity College Dublin, and Archbishop of Armagh from 1625, he shaped the newly protestant Church of Ireland. Tracing its roots back to St Patrick, he gave it a sense of Irish identity and provided a theology which was strongly Calvinist and fiercely anti-Catholic. In exile in England in the 1640s he advised both king and parliament, trying to heal the ever-widening rift by devising a compromise over church government. Forced finally to choose sides by the outbreak of civil war in 1642, Ussher opted for the royalists, but found it difficult to combine his loyalty to Charles with his detestation of Catholicism. A meticulous scholar and an extensive researcher, Ussher had a breathtaking command of languages and disciplines - 'learned to a miracle' according to one of his friends. He worked on a series of problems: the early history of bishops, the origins of Christianity in Ireland and Britain, and the implications of double predestination, making advances which were to prove of lasting significance. Tracing the interconnections between this scholarship and his wider ecclesiastical and political interests, Alan Ford throws new light on the character and attitudes of a seminal figure in the history of Irish Protestantism.

The Imaginative World of the Reformation

The Imaginative World of the Reformation
Author: Peter Matheson
Publisher: Fortress Press
Total Pages: 170
Release: 2000
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 9781451415902

Views the Reformation as it appeared in pamphlets and sermons, woodcuts and paintings, poetry and song, correspondence, and contours of daily life.

Staging Scripture

Staging Scripture
Author:
Publisher: BRILL
Total Pages: 422
Release: 2016-04-18
Genre: Drama
ISBN: 9004313958

Against a background which included revolutionary changes in religious belief, extensive enlargement of dramatic styles and the technological innovation of printing, this collection of essays about biblical drama offers innovative approaches to text and performance, while reviewing some well-established critical issues. The Bible in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries appears in a complex of roles in relation to the drama: as an authority and centre of belief, a place of controversy, an emotional experience and, at times, a weapon. This collection brings into focus the new biblical learning, including the re-editing of biblical texts, as well as classical influences, and it gives a unique view of the relationship between the Bible and the drama at a critical time for both. Contributors are: Stephanie Allen, David Bevington, Philip Butterworth, Sarah Carpenter, Philip Crispin, Clifford Davidson, Elisabeth Dutton, Garrett P. J. Epp, Bob Godfrey, Peter Happé, James McBain, Roberta Mullini, Katie Normington, Margaret Rogerson, Charlotte Steenbrugge, Greg Walker, and Diana Wyatt.

Biblical Readings and Literary Writings in Early Modern England, 1558-1625

Biblical Readings and Literary Writings in Early Modern England, 1558-1625
Author: Victoria Brownlee
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Total Pages: 271
Release: 2018
Genre: Juvenile Nonfiction
ISBN: 0198812485

This book considers the relationship between biblical readings and literary writings in early modern England and it explores the impact of how the Bible was read across a variety of writers and genres.