The Origins of Protestant Aesthetics in Early Modern Europe

The Origins of Protestant Aesthetics in Early Modern Europe
Author: William A. Dyrness
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Total Pages: 245
Release: 2019-05-23
Genre: Art
ISBN: 1108493351

The aesthetics of everyday life, as reflected in art museums and galleries throughout the western world, is the result of a profound shift in aesthetic perception that occurred during the Renaissance and Reformation. In this book, William A. Dyrness examines intellectual developments in late Medieval Europe, which turned attention away from a narrow range liturgical art and practices and towards a celebration of God's presence in creation and in history. Though threatened by the human tendency to self-assertion, he shows how a new focus on God's creative and recreative action in the world gave time and history a new seriousness, and engendered a broad spectrum of aesthetic potential. Focusing in particular on the writings of Luther and Calvin, Dyrness demonstrates how the reformers' conceptual and theological frameworks pertaining to the role of the arts influenced the rise of realistic theater, lyric poetry, landscape painting, and architecture in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries.

Protestant Aesthetics and the Arts

Protestant Aesthetics and the Arts
Author: Sarah Covington
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 303
Release: 2020-01-27
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 0429671385

The Reformation was one of the defining cultural turning points in Western history, even if there is a longstanding stereotype that Protestants did away with art and material culture. Rather than reject art and aestheticism, Protestants developed their own aesthetic values, which Protestant Aesthetics and the Arts addresses as it identifies and explains the link between theological aesthetics and the arts within a Protestant framework across five-hundred years of history. Featuring essays from an international gathering of leading experts working across a diverse set of disciplines, Protestant Aesthetics and the Arts is the first study of its kind, containing essays that address Protestantism and the fine arts (visual art, music, literature, and architecture), and historical and contemporary Protestant theological perspectives on the subject of beauty and imagination. Contributors challenge accepted preconceptions relating to the boundaries of theological aesthetics and religiously determined art; disrupt traditional understandings of periodization and disciplinarity; and seek to open rich avenues for new fields of research. Building on renewed interest in Protestantism in the study of religion and modernity and the return to aesthetics in Christian theological inquiry, this volume will be of significant interest to scholars of Theology, Aesthetics, Art and Architectural History, Literary Criticism, and Religious History.

The Oxford Handbook of Calvin and Calvinism

The Oxford Handbook of Calvin and Calvinism
Author: Bruce Gordon
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Total Pages: 711
Release: 2021
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 0198728816

The Oxford Handbook of Calvin and Calvinism offers a comprehensive assessment of John Calvin and the tradition of Calvinism as it evolved from the sixteenth century to today. Featuring contributions from scholars who present the latest research on a pluriform religious movement that became a global faith. The volume focuses on key aspects of Calvin's thought and its diverse reception in Europe, the transatlantic world, Africa, South America, and Asia. Calvin's theology was from the beginning open to a wide range of interpretations and was never a static body of ideas and practices. Over the course of his life his thought evolved and deepened while retaining unresolved tensions and questions that created a legacy that was constantly evolving in different cultural contexts. Calvinism itself is an elusive term, bringing together Christian communities that claim a shared heritage but often possess radically distinct characters. The Handbook reveals fascinating patterns of continuity and change to demonstrate how the movement claimed the name of the Genevan reformer but was moulded by an extraordinary range of religious, intellectual and historical influences, from the Enlightenment and Darwinism to indigenous African beliefs and postmodernism. In its global contexts, Calvinism has been continuously reimagined and reinterpreted. This collection throws new light on the highly dynamic and fluid nature of a deeply influential form of Christianity.

The Oxford Handbook of Jonathan Edwards

The Oxford Handbook of Jonathan Edwards
Author: Douglas A. Sweeney
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Total Pages: 728
Release: 2021-02-02
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 0191068896

The Oxford Handbook of Jonathan Edwards offers a state-of-the-art summary of scholarship on Edwards by a diverse, international, and interdisciplinary group of Edwards scholars, many of whom serve as global leaders in the burgeoning world of research and writing on 'America's theologian'. As an early modern clerical polymath, Edwards is of interest to historians, theologians, and literary scholars. He is also an interlocutor for contemporary clergy and philosophical theologians. All such readers—and many more—will find here an authoritative overview of Edwards' life, ministry, and writings, as well as a representative sampling of cutting-edge scholarship on Edwards from across several disciplines. The volume falls into four sections, which reflect the diversity of Edwards studies today. The first section turns to the historical Edwards and grounds him in his period and the relevant contexts that shaped his life and work. The second section balances the historical reconstruction of Edwards as a theological and philosophical thinker with explorations of his usefulness for constructive theology and the church today. In part three, the focus shifts to the different ways and contexts in which Edwards attempted to realize his ideas and ideals in his personal life, scholarship, and ministry, but also to the ways in which these historical realities stood in tension with, limited, or resisted his aspirations. The final section looks at Edwards' widening renown and influence as well as diverse appropriations. This Handbook serves as an authoritative guide for readers overwhelmed by the enormity of the multi-lingual world of Edwards studies. It will bring readers up to speed on the most important work being done and then serve them as a benchmark in the field of Edwards scholarship for decades to come.

Historical Dictionary of the Reformed Churches

Historical Dictionary of the Reformed Churches
Author: Robert Benedetto
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield
Total Pages: 895
Release: 2023-10-15
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 1538130041

As its name implies, the Reformed tradition grew out of the 16th century Protestant Reformation. The Reformed churches consider themselves to be the Catholic Church reformed. The movement originated in the reform efforts of Huldrych Zwingli (1484-1531) of Zurich and John Calvin (1509-1564) of Geneva. Although the Reformed movement was dependent upon many Protestant leaders, it was Calvin's tireless work as a writer, preacher, teacher, and social and ecclesiastical reformer that provided a substantial body of literature and an ethos from which the Reformed tradition grew. Today, the Reformed churches are a multicultural, multiethnic, and multinational phenomenon. Historical Dictionary of the Reformed Churches, Third Edition contains a chronology, an introduction, and an extensive bibliography. The dictionary section has more than 1,000 cross-referenced entries on leaders, personalities, events, facts, movements, and beliefs of the Reformed churches. This book is an excellent resource for students, researchers, and anyone wanting to know more about reformed churches.

The Artistic Sphere

The Artistic Sphere
Author: Roger D. Henderson
Publisher: InterVarsity Press
Total Pages: 325
Release: 2024-01-02
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 1514007983

The Neo-Calvinist tradition is well-equipped to offer wisdom on the arts to the whole body of Christ. Edited by art scholar Roger Henderson and Marleen Hengelaar-Rookmaaker, daughter of Hans Rookmaaker, this volume brings together history, philosophy, and theology to consider the relationship between the arts and the Neo-Calvinist tradition.

Inventing the Council inside the Apostolic Library

Inventing the Council inside the Apostolic Library
Author: Filip Malesevic
Publisher: Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG
Total Pages: 564
Release: 2021-10-04
Genre: History
ISBN: 3110720655

The book provides a detailed study of the Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana and its interior decoration which today still remains inaccessible to the ordinary visit. Placing the history of the Vatican Library in the larger context of how erudition was administered and organized within the Early Modern Roman Curia, the book will also take into consideration how the Vaticana was used in contrast to other newly founded libraries.

Louise Moillon

Louise Moillon
Author: Lesley Stevenson
Publisher: Getty Publications
Total Pages: 112
Release: 2024-04-02
Genre: Art
ISBN: 1606069020

The life and career of Louise Moillon (1609/10–1696) offers a fascinating case study of a supremely talented artist whose posthumous reputation has been mired in invisibility. Born and raised in Paris, Moillon was the sole woman in a circle of Calvinist Protestant émigrés who brought their tradition of still-life painting with them from Flanders. During her lifetime, she was able to enjoy a degree of professional independence and attract enough recognition to be regarded as on a level with her male counterparts, yet her exquisite work and enigmatic story are little known today. This illustrated biography examines some of the ways in which Moillon’s story has been represented since the revival of interest in her work and draws on recent scholarship to situate the painter in her rightful place. Offering a sweeping exploration of the genre of still life, this book also chronicles how a woman in early modern France was able to capture the attention of the artistic world while dissecting why her prominence waned in the centuries following her death.

Beyond Devotion

Beyond Devotion
Author: Łukasz Cybulski
Publisher: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht
Total Pages: 301
Release: 2022-07-11
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 364755295X

This volume is one of scarce studies of religious literature of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth conducted by scholars from both Poland and Lithuania. What makes this endeavour important is mainly the will to overcome the frontiers and strains of the modern world that encourage exploring separateness instead of the realities of deep mutual interdependency. Łukasz Cybulski and Kristina Rutkovska analyse secular and religious writings of secular authors as well as those belonging to the clergy and religious orders. Their main interest lies in exploring the different genres of early modern Polish and Lithuanian sermons and novels, and in tracing this heritage to its social and literary context through the works' material presence in manuscript form and in print. Other papers in this volume give insights into the origins of vernacular translations of the Holy Scriptures and the controversies surrounding them, as well as into the written testimonies of religious devotion and conversions. The aim has been not only to confront different kinds of texts and experiences, but to situate this heritage in its social and confessional context.

The Oxford History of the Reformation

The Oxford History of the Reformation
Author: Peter Marshall
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Total Pages: 425
Release: 2022-09-08
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 0192648381

'a vital resource' TLS 'Compelling collection' Literary Review The Reformation was a seismic event in history whose consequences are still unfolding in Europe and across the world. Martin Luther's protests against the marketing of indulgences in 1517 were part of a long-standing pattern of calls for reform in the Christian Church. But they rapidly took a radical and unexpected turn, engulfing first Germany, and then Europe, in furious arguments about how God's will was to be 'saved'. However, these debates did not remain confined to a narrow sphere of theology. They came to reshape politics and international relations; social, cultural, and artistic developments; relations between the sexes; and the patterns and performances of everyday life. They were also the stimulus for Christianity's transformation into a truly global religion, as agents of the Roman Catholic Church sought to compensate for losses in Europe with new conversions in Asia and the Americas. Covering both Protestant and Catholic reform movements, in Europe and across the wider world, this compact volume tells the story of the Reformation from its immediate, explosive beginnings, through to its profound longer-term consequences and legacy for the modern world. The story is not one of an inevitable triumph of liberty over oppression, enlightenment over ignorance. Rather, it tells how a multitude of rival groups and individuals, with or without the support of political power, strove after visions of 'reform'. And how, in spite of themselves, they laid the foundations for the plural and conflicted world we now inhabit.