Preachers And People In The Reformations And Early Modern Period

This anthology provides a broad overview of the social history of preaching throughout Western and Central Europe, with sections devoted to genre, specific countries, and commentary on the appeal of the Reformation messages.

Early modern audiences, readerships, and viewerships were not homogenous. Differences in status, education, language, wealth, and experience (to name only a few variables) could influence how a group of people, or a particular person, received and made sense of sermons, public proclamations, dramatic and musical performances, images, objects, and spaces. The ways in which each of these were framed and executed could have a serious impact on their relevance and effectiveness. The chapters in this volume explore the ways in which authors, poets, artists, preachers, theologians, playwrights, and performers took account of and encoded pluriform potential audiences, readers, and viewers in their works, and how these varied parties encountered and responded to these works. The contributors here investigate these complex interactions through a variety of critical and methodological lenses.

This volume studies Reformation-Era theology by comparing how various denominations formulated and treated topics, thus encouraging ecumenical dialogue. It will remain the definitive place for teachers and students of theology to begin any further study into the origins and formulation of their denomination's teachings during this period.

In Preaching a Dual Identity Nicholas Must studies the development of Huguenot confessional identity through sermons in the seventeenth century. In doing so, Must emphasizes a hybrid identity that combined religious particularism and political loyalism.

Historical Dictionary of the Reformation and Counter-Reformation provides a comprehensive account of two chains of events_the Protestant Reformation and the Catholic Counter-Reformation_that have left an enduring imprint on Europe, America, and the world at large. This is done through a chronology, a introductory essay, a bibliography, and over 300 cross-referenced dictionary entries on persons, places, countries, institutions, doctrines, ideas, and events.

Though the Reformation was sparked by the actions of Martin Luther, it was not a decisive break from the Church in Rome but rather a gradual process of religious and social change. As the men responsible for religious instruction and moral oversight at the village level, parish pastors played a key role in the implementation of the Reformation and the gradual development of a Protestant religious culture, but their ministry has seldom been examined in the light of how they were prepared for the pastorate. Teaching the Reformation examines the four generations of Reformed pastors who served the church of Basel in the century after the Reformation, focusing on the evolution of pastoral training and Reformed theology, the theory and practice of preaching, and the performance of pastoral care in both urban and rural parishes. It looks at how these pastors were educated and what they learned, examining not only the study of theology but also the general education in languages, rhetoric and dialectic that future pastors received at the citys Latin school and in the arts faculty of the university. It points to significant changes over time in the content of that education, which in turn separated Basels pastors into distinct generations. The study also looks more specifically at preaching in Basel, demonstrating how the evolution of dialectic and rhetoric instruction, and particularly the spread of Ramism, led to changes in both exegetical method and homiletics. These developments, combined with the gradual elaboration of Reformed theology, resulted in a distinctive style of Reformed Orthodox preaching in Basel. The development of pastoral education also had a direct impact on how Basels clergy carried out their other dutiescatechization, administering the sacraments, counseling the dying and consoling the bereaved, and overseeing the moral conduct of their parishioners. The growing professionalization of the clergy, the result of more intensive education and more stringent supervision, contributed to the gradual implantation of a Reformed religious culture in Basel.

Using "lived religion" as its conceptual tool, this book explores how the Reformation showed itself in and was influenced by lay people's everyday lives. It reinvestigates the character of the Reformation in what later became the heartlands of Lutheranism.

A lively exploration of the medieval and early modern attitudes towards dance, as the perception of dancers changed from saints dancing after Christ into cows dancing after the devil.