History Of The Reformation In Germany

The Reformation Movement in Germany provides readers with a strong narrative overview of the most recent work on the Reformation in the German lands.

[1] The Reformation.--[2] 1648-1840.--[3] 1840-1945.

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can usually download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1905 edition. Excerpt: ... BOOK III. ENDEAVOURS TO RENDER THE REFORMATION NATIONAL AND COMPLETE. 1521--1525. The peculiar character and form which the Latin church had gradually assumed gave rise, as we have already seen, to the necessity for its reform; --a reform demanded by the state of the world, and prepared by the national tendencies of the German mind, the advancement of learning, and the divergencies of theological opinion. We have likewise remarked how the abuse of the traffic in indulgences, and the disputes to which it gave birth, led, without design or premeditation on the part of any concerned, to a violent outbreak of opposition. While we regard this as inevitable, we cannot proceed further without pausing to make some observations on its extreme danger. For every member and every interest of society is enlinked with the whole established order of things which forms at once its base and its shelter; if once the vital powers which animate this mass are thrown into conflict, who can say where the victorious assailants will find a check, or whether every thing will not be overwhelmed in common ruin? No institution could be more exposed to this danger than the papacy, which had for centuries exercised so mighty an influence over the whole existence of the European nations. The established order of things in Europe was, in fact, the same militarysacerdotal state which had arisen in the eighth and ninth centuries, and, notwithstanding all the changes that had been introduced, had always remained essentially the same--compounded of the same fundamental elements. Nay, even those very changes had generally been favourable to the sacerdotal element, whose commanding position had enabled it to pervade every form of public and private life, every vein of...

This book studies the connections between the political reform of the Holy Roman Empire and the German lands around 1500 and the sixteenth-century religious reformations, both Protestant and Catholic. It argues that the character of the political changes (dispersed sovereignty, local autonomy) prevented both a general reformation of the Church before 1520 and a national reformation thereafter. The resulting settlement maintained the public peace through politically structured religious communities (confessions), thereby avoiding further religious strife and fixing the confessions into the Empire's constitution. The Germans' emergence into the modern era as a people having two national religions was the reformation's principal legacy to modern Germany.

Book Review

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.