The Consistory and Social Discipline in Calvin's Geneva

The Consistory and Social Discipline in Calvin's Geneva
Author: Jeffrey R. Watt
Publisher: University of Rochester Press
Total Pages: 344
Release: 2020-11-15
Genre:
ISBN: 9781648250040

Examines the most successful institution of social discipline in Reformation Europe: the Consistory of Geneva during the time of John Calvin

Social Control in Europe

Social Control in Europe
Author: Herman Roodenburg
Publisher: Ohio State University Press
Total Pages: 392
Release: 2004
Genre: History
ISBN: 0814209688

This first volume of a two-volume collection of essays provides a comprehensive examination of the idea of social control in the history of Europe. The uniqueness of these volumes lies in two main areas. First, the contributors compare methods of social control on many levels, from police to shaming, church to guilds. Second, they look at these formal and informal institutions as two-way processes. Unlike many studies of social control in the past, the scholars here examine how individuals and groups that are being controlled necessarily participate in and shape the manner in which they are regulated. Hardly passive victims of discipline and control, these folks instead claimed agency in that process, accepting and resisting -- and thus molding -- the controls under which they functioned. The essays in this volume focus on the interplay of ecclesiastical institutions and the emerging states, examining discipline from a bottom-up perspective. Book jacket.

The Disciplinary Revolution

The Disciplinary Revolution
Author: Philip S. Gorski
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
Total Pages: 268
Release: 2010-09-17
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 0226304868

What explains the rapid growth of state power in early modern Europe? While most scholars have pointed to the impact of military or capitalist revolutions, Philip S. Gorski argues instead for the importance of a disciplinary revolution unleashed by the Reformation. By refining and diffusing a variety of disciplinary techniques and strategies, such as communal surveillance, control through incarceration, and bureaucratic office-holding, Calvin and his followers created an infrastructure of religious governance and social control that served as a model for the rest of Europe—and the world.

The Reformation of Ritual

The Reformation of Ritual
Author: Susan Karant-Nunn
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 549
Release: 2005-08-19
Genre: History
ISBN: 1134829183

In The Reformation of Ritual Susan Karant-Nunn explores the function of ritual in early modern German society, and the extent to which it was modified by the Reformation. Employing anthropological insights, and drawing on extensive archival research, Susan Karant-Nunn outlines the significance of the ceremonial changes. This comprehensive study includes an examination of all major rites of passage: birth, baptism, confirmation, engagement, marriage, the churching of women after childbirth, penance, the Eucharist, and dying. The author argues that the changes in ritual made over the course of the century reflect more than theological shifts; ritual was a means of imposing discipline and of making the divine more or less accessible. Church and state cooperated in using ritual as one means of gaining control of the populace.

Protestant Pluralism

Protestant Pluralism
Author: Ralph Stevens
Publisher: Studies in Modern British Reli
Total Pages: 220
Release: 2018-08-10
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 9781783273294

The 1689 Toleration Act marked a profound shift in the English religious landscape. By permitting the public worship of Protestant Dissenters, the statute laid the foundations for legal religious pluralism, albeit limited, and ensured that eighteenth-century English society would be multi-denominational. However, the Act was rushed, incomplete and on many issues fundamentally ambiguous. It therefore threw up numerous practical difficulties for the clergy of the Church of England, who were deeply divided about what the legislation implied. This book explores how the Church reacted to the legal establishment of a multi-denominational religious environment and how it came to terms with religious pluralism. Thanks to the Toleration Act's inherent ambiguity, there was genuine confusion over how far it extended. The book examines how the practicalities of toleration and pluralism were worked out in the decades after 1689. A series of five case studies addresses: political participation; the movement for the reformation of manners; baptism; education; and the use of chapels. These studies illustrate how the Toleration Act influenced the lived experiences of the clergy and the effects that it had on their pastoral role. The book places the Act in its broader context, at the end of England's 'long Reformation', and emphasises how, far from representing a defining constitutional moment, the Act heralded a process of experimentation, debate and adjustment. RALPH STEVENS is a Tutor in History at University College Dublin.

Adultery and Divorce in Calvin's Geneva

Adultery and Divorce in Calvin's Geneva
Author: Robert McCune Kingdon
Publisher: Harvard University Press
Total Pages: 230
Release: 1994
Genre: Family & Relationships
ISBN: 9780674005211

In Calvin's Geneva, the changes associated with the Reformation were particularly abrupt and far-reaching, in large part owing to John Calvin himself. Adultery and Divorce in Calvin's Geneva makes two major contributions to our understanding of this time. The first is to the history of divorce. The second is in illustrating the operations of the Consistory of Geneva--an institution designed to control in all its variety the behavior of the entire population--which was established at Calvin's insistence in 1541. This mandate came shortly after the city officially adopted Protestantism in 1536, a time when divorce became legally possible for the first time in centuries. Robert Kingdon illustrates the changes that accompanied the earliest Calvinist divorces by examining in depth a few of the most dramatic cases and showing how divorce affected real individuals. He considers first, and in the most detail, divorce for adultery, the best-known grounds for divorce and the best documented. He also covers the only other generally accepted grounds for these early divorces--desertion. The second contribution of the book, to show the work of the Consistory of Geneva, is a first step toward a fuller study of the institution. Kingdon has supervised the first accurate and complete transcription of the twenty-one volumes of registers of the Consistory and has made the first extended use of these materials, as well as other documents that have never before been so fully utilized.

The Reformation of Community

The Reformation of Community
Author: Charles H. Parker
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Total Pages: 246
Release: 1998-11-28
Genre: History
ISBN: 9780521623056

By the time of the Calvinist Reformation, the cities of Holland had established a very long tradition of social provision for the poor in the civic community. Calvinists however intended to care for their own church members, who were by definition 'within the household of faith', through the deaconate, a confessional relief agency. This book examines the relationship between municipal and ecclesiastical relief agencies in the six chief cities of Holland - Dordrecht, Haarlem, Delft, Leiden, Amsterdam and Gouda - from the public establishment of the Reformed Church in 1572 to the aftermath of the Synod of Dort. The author argues that the conflict between charitable organizations reveal competing conceptions of Christian community that came to the fore as a result of the Dutch Reformation. This is the first comparative study of poor relief in Holland, which contributes to our understanding of the Reformation throughout Europe.