Reformation & Counterreformation Theologies (c. 1300-1648)
More general subjects:
Kabbalah from Medieval Ashkenaz and Renaissance Christian Theology
Eleazar of Worms (c. 1165–c. 1238) and Egidio da Viterbo (c. 1469–1532)
The preoccupation of Christian theologians and scholars with the Hebrew language and sources at the dawn of the sixteenth century resulted in the transfer of a vast corpus of medieval Hebrew texts into Christian intellectual discourse and networks. These Hebrew sources were meticulously collected copied translated and subjected to rigorous study. These collections include texts that originate from medieval Ashkenaz the majority of which can be attributed to Eleazar ben Yehuda of Worms (c. 1165–c. 1238). Rabbi Eleazar was a prominent Jewish scholar of his time and a member of one of the most prestigious families in Jewish communities of the German Rhineland and Palatinate.
However the history of medieval Ashkenazic writings has been neglected in scholarship which has favoured other Jewish (primarily Sephardic) sources in tracing the infl uence of medieval Jewish mysticism on Christian theology and Kabbalah. This book takes the hitherto disregarded Ashkenazi Hebrew sources as its point of departure. It focuses on the work of Eleazar as a main representative of the Ḥaside Ashkenaz and on his mag num opus Sode Razayya which discusses all matter of the divine and the mundane sphere. The book explores how Eleazar’s work was a potentially interesting source for a Renaissance Christian Kabbalist like Egidio (Giles) da Viterbo. Kabbalah from Ashkenaz is distinguished by its emphasis on the Hebrew letters and language along with the divine word and divine speech (dibur). This central motif of the Ashkenazi sources found resonance with certain Christian theologians and Kabbalists in the context of Christian logos theology which is similarly anchored in the divine word (verbum).
La Réforme aux Pays‑Bas,1500-1620
Cette étude générale de la Réforme aux Pays-Bas retrace les développements clés du processus de réforme - à la fois auprès de la population protestante et catholique - pendant le XVIe siècle. Synthétisant cinquante ans de littérature scientifique Christine Kooi se concentre particulièrement sur le contexte politique de l'époque : comment le changement religieux a été procédé au milieu de l'intégration et la désintégration de l'État dynastique des Habsbourg aux Pays-Bas. Une attention particulière est accordée au rôle de la Réforme dans la fomentation et l'alimentation de la révolte contre le régime des Habsbourg à la fin du XVIe siècle ainsi qu'à sa contribution à la formation des deux états successeurs de la région la République néerlandaise et la Pays-Bas du Sud (Belgique). La Réforme aux Pays-Bas 1500-1620 est un outil de travail essentiel pour les universitaires et les étudiants de l'histoire européenne moderne réunissant en un seul volume des recherches spécialisées sur les Pays-Bas.
Gerson rhénan
Itinéraires culturels et circulation des textes dans l’Europe rhénane, XVe-XVIe siècles
Chancelier de l’Université de Paris Jean Gerson (1363-1429) est surtout connu comme théoricien de la théologie mystique et par son action réformatrice au sein de l’Église pendant les années difficiles du Grand Schisme où il joua un rôle de premier plan. Or si la carrière universitaire et l’action politique de Gerson font de lui un intellectuel parisien l’évidence de la transmission manuscrite et imprimée désigne sans équivoque le Rhin supérieur comme la région où la diffusion des œuvres du chancelier a été la plus foisonnante. Intervenant à une échelle comparable à la diffusion manuscrite des œuvres de Thomas d’Aquin le rayonnement de l’œuvre de Gerson a ceci de spectaculaire qu’il dépasse largement le milieu universitaire et qu’il se déploie en moins d’un siècle. Le paradoxe reste pourtant intact de pourquoi l’Allemagne et non la France s’impose comme le lieu de rayonnement de l’œuvre de Gerson dans des proportions aussi importantes quantitativement ? Pour répondre à cette question l’étude de la réception de l’œuvre du chancelier ne peut pas faire l’économie d’une réévaluation de la tradition manuscrite et imprimée des 15e et 16e siècles à partir des témoins préservés dans les bibliothèques du Rhin supérieur. En privilégiant le cas de Gerson comme point d’observation ce volume se propose de renouveler les perspectives de l’histoire intellectuelle et culturelle dans le long 15e siècle en focalisant sur l’histoire des textes les conditions et les circonstances de leur transmission afin de dresser une cartographie des réseaux de communication dans la région rhénane dans les décennies qui entourent l’invention de l’imprimerie.
Le père du siècle: The Early Modern Reception of Jean Gerson (1363–1429)
This volume provides the first wide-ranging investigation of the post-fifteenth-century reception of Jean Gerson (1363-1429) chancellor of the University of Paris guiding light of the Council of Constance and arguably the most influential of late medieval theologians. His impact on early modern movements and thinkers paved the way for many developments still shaping our existence today. Besides his well-known influence in theology and church history the chancellor left a significant impact in jurisprudence human rights art music education literature and even medicine; there is hardly an area of the humanities that did not pay at least some tribute to his authority and there was almost no early modern political or religious movement in the West that neglected his name. Nearly all of the most prominent early modern intellectuals perceived him as an authority and father figure; an illustrious cohort of celebrities including Thomas More Martin Luther King James I Ignatius of Loyola Girolamo Savonarola Christopher Columbus Bartholomew de Las Casas and many others relied on his writings and ideas. The geography of his late-fifteenth- and sixteenth-century reception reflects his pre-eminence reaching from Spain to Scandinavia.
Circulating the Word of God in Medieval and Early Modern Europe
Catholic Preaching and Preachers across Manuscript and Print (c. 1450 to c. 1550)
This volume concentrates on how the sermon a pivotal element in mass communication aimed to shape the people of Europe. Rather than setting up the usual binary divides it highlights the linguistic complications the textual inter-relationships the confessional cross-currents and the variations between public and private sermon dissemination operating at different rates and with variable results throughout Europe. Effectively the emphasis here is on how Catholic preachers and Catholic preaching carried on in the period between the handwritten and the printed sermon a time when not only the mode of production was changing but when the very purpose and meaning of preaching itself would soon alter in a western Christian world that was becoming no longer completely Catholic. By examining case-studies chosen from countries with contrasting manuscript and printing traditions (Denmark England Finland France Germany Italy the Low Countries Romania Spain and Sweden) we aim to examine some of the main historical literary and theological factors in the development of the sermon in Latin and the vernaculars which is itself in the process of changing formats and sometimes languages at a time of religious ferment from the advent of print to the death of Martin Luther. These essays which are effectively in dialogue with each other are divided into geographical/linguistic sections organized along broadly chronological lines. They circulate from the peripheries of Europe to the centre moving from areas where evidence is now scarce to situations of thriving production.
Renaissance Religions
Modes and Meanings in History
Several decades of cultural and inter-disciplinary scholarship have yielded and continue to yield new insights into the diversity of religious experience in Europe from the fifteenth through the seventeenth centuries. Revisionist approaches to humanism and humanists have led to a re-evaluation of the framing of belief; the boundaries between Christianity Judaism and Islam are seen to be more fluid and porous; a keen interest in devotion and materiality has lent new voice to 'subaltern' elements in society; sermon studies has emerged as a distinct discipline and a preacher's omissions are now understood to be often more telling than what was said; under the influence of the 'spatial turn' art and architectural history is generating new understandings of how belief and devotion translated into material culture; the emphasis in defining early modern Catholic culture and identity has moved from emphasizing reactions to Protestantism towards exploring roots and forms in fifteenth century reform movements; globalization mass migration and issues surrounding social inclusion have re-positioned our understanding of reform in the late medieval and early modern period. The essays in this volume reflect these historiographical and methodological developments and are organized according to four themes: Negotiating Boundaries Modelling Spirituality Sense and Emotion and Space and Form. This organization underscores how analysis of religious life clarifies the questions that are at the core of Renaissance studies today.
Wycliffism and Hussitism
Methods of Thinking, Writing, and Persuasion c. 1360 – c. 1460
John Wyclif (d. 1384) famous Oxford philosopher-theologian and controversialist was posthumously condemned as a heretic at the Council of Constance in 1415. Wyclif’s influence was pan-European and had a particular impact on Prague where Jan Hus from Charles University was his avowed disciple and the leader of a dissident reformist movement. Hus condemned to the stake at Constance gathered around him a prolific circle of disciples who changed the landscape of late medieval religion and literature in Bohemia just as Wyclif’s own followers had done in England.
Both thinkers and the movements associated with them played a crucial role in the transformation of later medieval European thought in particular through a radically enlarged role of textual production in the vernaculars (especially Middle English and Old Czech) as well as in Latin in the philosophical theological and ecclesiological realms.
This interdisciplinary volume of essays brings together cutting-edge research from scholars working in these and contiguous fields and asks fundamental questions about the methods that informed Wycliffite and Hussite writings and those by their interlocutors and opponents. Viewing these debates through a methodological lens enables a reassessment of the impact that they had and the responses they elicited across a range of European cultures from England in the west via France and Austria to Bohemia in the east.
Eschatology in the Work of Jan Hus
This study provides a systematic and comprehensive overview of Hus’s ideas on the last things as they are presented in both his work and life. It examines the content and language of his works particularly his Latin sermons and correspondence from a literary-historical perspective. It explores general eschatology (Antichrist purgatory heaven and hell) as well as its intertwining with the Last Things that Jan Hus experienced personally in his struggle against Antichrist. Thus the reader will learn not only about Hus’s official ideas but also about his intimate thoughts contained in correspondence written during his exile and even as he was in prison awaiting death.
The book also presents Hus’s eschatology in the broader context of Church reform. It clarifies how Hus’s eschatology developed from its beginnings up to his death and takes into account the writings of other thinkers whose ideas are connected to Hus’s eschatology such as John Wycliffe Milíč of Kroměříž Matěj of Janov and Nicholas of Dresden. The book also features an introductory prolegomena on Hus’s life and work and early reform eschatology which describes not only relevant Czech influences on Hus’s eschatology (e.g. university theology social-political factors the Czech preaching tradition) but also European influences (e.g. Peter Lombard heterodox doctrines).
Music and Theology in the European Reformations
Throughout the history of the Church music has regularly been placed under the critical microscope. Nonetheless the intensity of thought concerning music’s role in the liturgy and in spiritual life in general reached a peak during the period of the European Reformations. This multidisciplinary collection examines the debates and controversies around music and theology during that time from both Catholic and various Protestant perspectives. It includes twenty essays from musicologists theologians Biblical scholars and Church historians that attempt to answer the following questions: What difference did the theological and ecclesiological developments of the sixteenth century make to musical forms and practices? What continuities of practice existed with former times? How was the desire to restore the church to an imagined pristine state manifest in music and liturgy? How did developments in exegesis arising from the massively increased knowledge and access to the Bible in Hebrew and Greek affect the way composers wrote and congregations heard? Why did some reformers embrace music while others rejected it?
Pursuing a New Order II.
Late Medieval Vernacularization and the Bohemian Reformation
In the first two decades of the fifteenth century the Hussite religious reform movement emerged in Bohemia; it used one of the realm's vernacular languages Czech both to disseminate its reform ideas and to establish strong foundations for the reform. The vernacular became a significant strategy for identification capable of binding together disconnected religious ethnic political and regional identities and generating a very potent aggregate of identifications. This volume considers material from the second half of the fourteenth century to the first half of the sixteenth beginning with the so-called Hussite ‘forerunners’ and ending with the early German reformation. Individual essays discuss the various functions of the vernaculars in different text types social situations and religious and political contexts. Together they correct former assumptions about the topic and provide a basis for further study of Hussite vernacular theology and contribute to the transformation of scholarly narratives about the Hussite movement by including works of vernacular religious education among the most important source material. It offers a basis for the comparative research on the role of the vernaculars in late medieval European religious reform movements.
En 500 après Martin Luther
Réception et conflits d’interprétation (1517-2017). Colloque tenu à l’Institut catholique de Toulouse du 17 au 19 octobre 2017
Publication issue d'un colloque réalisé en octobre 2017 par l'institut catholique de Toulouse à l’occasion du 5e centenaire de la Réforme protestante.
L’approche est résolument celle de l’histoire des idées religieuses et de l’interdisciplinarité.
Sans négliger l’approche historique la priorité est donnée à la réception et à l’interprétation de Martin Luther en luthéranisme et dans la théologie catholique contemporaine. Ainsi cette publication vise à mettre en lumière les conflits d’interprétation les points de rupture mais aussi les points d’intersections avec d’autres confessions chrétiennes principalement le catholicisme et le calvinisme dans une perspective œcuménique.
Considérer Martin Luther comme point de départ c’est s’intéresser davantage aux bouleversements auxquels il a conduit et à ses prodromes qu’à ses origines ou ses inspirations. Il s’agit aussi de comprendre son projet de réforme ses méthodes de retour aux sources son emploi de l’histoire les représentations qu’il produit du monde et de l’homme des implications sociales et politiques de sa révolution théologique.
The Secular Liturgical Office in Late Medieval England
Until recently research on the late medieval English Office liturgy has suggested that all manuscripts of the same liturgical Use including those of the celebrated and widespread Uses of Sarum and York are in large part interchangeable and uniform. This study demonstrates through detailed analyses of the manuscript breviaries and antiphonals of each secular liturgical Use of medieval England that such books do share a common textual core. But this is in large part restricted to a single genre of text - the responsory. Other features even within manuscripts of the same Use are subject to striking and significant variation influenced by local customs and hagiographical and textual priorities and also by varying reception to liturgical prescriptions from ecclesiastical authorities. The identification of the characteristic features of each Use and the differentiation of regional patterns have resulted from treating each manuscript as a unique witness a practice which is not common in liturgical studies but one which gives the manuscripts greater value as historical sources. The term ‘Use’ often employed as a descriptor of orthodoxy may itself imply a greater uniformity than ever existed for the ways that the ‘Use of Sarum’ a liturgical pattern originally designed for enactment in a single cathedral was realised in countless other venues for worship were dependent on the times places and contexts in which the rites were celebrated.
Erasmus and the Renaissance Republic of Letters
This volume contains a selection from among the papers delivered at a conference held to mark the centenary of a watershed event in early modern studies: the appearance of Volume I of P. S. Allen’s edition of Erasmus’s letters. Erasmus scholarship has been a growing field since the late twentieth century owing to the enormous volume and vast intellectual range of his oeuvre and to the reprinting of his works from the 1960s onwards while Allen’s edition has proved the basis for research for scholars of almost every aspect of Renaissance humanism and the Reformation.
The conference aimed to investigate as many aspects as possible of Erasmus’s literary educational rhetorical and theological activities and of their influence on the emerging Europe of the early modern era. The essays collected here present a wide-ranging overview of the current state of Erasmus scholarship including a survey of the discoveries of letters to and from Erasmus unknown to Allen the printing for the first time since 1529 of the opening section of an important letter to him from Germain de Brie an account of the crucial role played by Ulrich von Hutten in the publication of the dialogue Iulius exclusus e coelis and several studies of the influence of Erasmian thought on early modern political and theological controversies. With its broad coverage of the current field the volume will prove indispensable to Erasmus scholars.
The Courtly and Commercial Art of the Wycliffite Bible
In 1409 Archbishop Thomas Arundel banned the Wycliffite Bible along with the heresy attributed to Oxford theologian John Wyclif for which it was named. Containing the first complete translation of the Bible into English the Wycliffite Bible is nonetheless the most numerous extant work in Middle English by a wide margin.
Nearly half the existing copies of the Wycliffite Bible are illuminated. This book offers the first sustained critical examination of the decoration of Wycliffite Bibles. This study has found that many copies were decorated by the most prominent border and initial artists of their eras. Many more were modeled on these styles. Such highly regarded artists had little to gain from producing volumes that might lead them to trial as heretics and ultimately to the stake.
This unprecedented study contributes to recent revisionist criticism and troubles long-standing assumptions about Wycliffism and the Wycliffite Bible. It contends that the manuscript record simply does not support a stark interpretation of the Wycliffite Bible as a marginalized text. Rather this study reveals a prolific and vibrant textual exchange within the book culture of late medieval England.
Religious Controversy in Europe, 1378–1536
Textual Transmission and Networks of Readership
This book gathers new work by scholars who share a common interest not only in the controversial texts of the period between 1378 and 1536 but also in how the use geographical movement and manipulation of texts contributed materially to the formation of groups and group identities. The period covered spans the traditional medieval/early modern divide and the concomitant transition from manuscript to print. The years between the eruption of the Great Schism and the outbreak of European reformations witnessed unprecedented rifts in communities institutions and alliances. Yet while the crises of this period gave rise to division they also prompted new groups to coalesce resulting in realignments of communication networks readership and textual circulation in Europe. The Councils of Constance and Basel facilitated the production and dissemination of vast quantities of documents. Movements challenging the Roman Church and efforts to reform the Church from within provoked a torrent of persuasive and polemical writings which gained further momentum with the introduction of printing. These new situations also fostered the development and expression of group identities defined by doctrine opposition vernacularity and a burgeoning sense of national self-consciousness. Religious Controversy in Europe 1378-1536 examines the textual and material circumstances of these developments.
The Drama of Reform
Theology and Theatricality, 1461-1553
The Drama of Reform establishes the impact of late medieval and early modern religious reform on dramaturgy. Taking an interdisciplinary approach it examines the interactions between theatricality and theology across a range of different plays including the Croxton Play of the Sacrament Jacke Jugeler John Bale’s Three Laws and Lewis Wager’s Life and Repentaunce of Mary Magdalene. Tracing the development of arguments concerning the interpretation of the sacraments the relationship between priests and players and the use and abuse of imagery and drama in religious worship The Drama of Reform draws on a rich variety of contextual materials including liturgical texts heresy trial accounts dramatic treatises polemical tracts and religious laws.
Focussed on the period between Archbishop Arundel’s Constitutions in the fifteenth century and Archbishop Cranmer’s second Book of Common Prayer in the sixteenth The Drama of Reform explores the phenomenological similarities between drama and certain religious rites notably the eucharist and proposes that religious reform prompted attempts to reform dramaturgy. In presenting this analysis the author argues that while drama continued to function as dramatic propaganda efforts to initiate new modes of playing were only partially successful.
The Memory and Motivation of Jan Hus, Medieval Priest and Martyr
Jan Hus (1371-1415) gave his name to a social and religious revolution which captured the attention of Europe. The central figure in a late medieval reform movement he died a condemned heretic. Martyrdom made him famous but his essential identity has remained a point of controversy. Who was Jan Hus?
This work explores the driving forces in the life and work of this medieval priest as he moved from obscurity to the vulnerability of a publicly accused heretic and the disgraceful prelude to martyrdom. It also focuses on the construction and facilitation of the memory of Jan Hus. Historical “facts” are often compelling but these postulations cannot be approached apart from the manner and process in which those events are remembered.This book illuminates the life and work of the medieval priest and martyr who rose from humble origins to national hero and popular saint on the platform of a unique and renewed practice of the Christian faith. So profound were his challenges to the church and so bellicose were the reactions to his untimely demise that the name Jan Hus was destined never to fade into oblivion.
Histoire des idées religieuses et scientifiques dans l’Europe moderne
Quarante ans d’enseignement à l’École Pratique des Hautes Études
Pendant plus de quarante ans Jean-Robert Armogathe titulaire de la chaire « Histoire des idées religieuses et scientifiques dans l'Europe moderne » a publié dans l’Annuaire de l’Ecole pratique des hautes études un résumé annuel de ses conférences hebdomadaires à la section des sciences religieuses. S’appuyant sur des documents rares ou inédits tirant parti de recherches internationales souvent originales cet ensemble contient à la fois une somme de connaissances sur les origines de l’Europe moderne dans leurs composantes philosophiques théologiques et scientifiques et de nombreuses suggestions de recherches. De la théologie du concile de Trente à la théorie de la vision oculaire l'ouvrage aborde les thèmes principaux de la réflexion philosophique religieuse et scientifique du XVIe au XVIIIe siècle ; si l'on y rencontre les noms les plus connus de cette période fondamentale dans la formation de la pensée occidentale moderne (Bellarmin Descartes Leibniz Bayle et bien d'autres) l'ouvrage met également en valeur l'apport de penseurs moins connus (Paolo Sarpi Giulio Cesare Vanini Franciscus Gomarus Zeger-Bernhard van Espen et d'autres). Complété par la liste des trois cents publications scientifiques qui ont accompagné son enseignement enrichi d’un index analytique des matières et des noms (plus de huit cents entrées) ce volume constitue de la sorte une introduction savante et claire à ce champ de recherches.
Jean-Robert Armogathe né à Marseille en 1947 est directeur d’études à l’École pratique des hautes études (sciences religieuses) où il enseigne depuis 1970. Il a dirigél’Histoire générale du christianisme (2 vol. PUF 2010) et publié une édition critique des Pensées (1670) de Pascal (avec D. Blot Champion 2010) et la Correspondance de Descartes (Tel Gallimard 2012). Sa dernière publication est La nature du monde. Science nouvelle et exégèse au XVIIe siècle (PUF 2007).
Wycliffite Controversies
The philosophical and theological ideas of John Wyclif their dissemination among clerical and lay audiences and the movement of religious dissent associated with his name all provoked sharp controversies in late medieval England. This volume brings together the very latest scholarship on Wyclif and Wycliffism with its contributors exploring in interdisciplinary fashion the historical literary and theological resonances of the Wycliffite controversies. Far from adhering to the traditional binary divide between ‘orthodoxy’ and ‘heresy’ as a tool for explaining the religious turmoil of the late fourteenth fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries essays here explore the construction and rhetorical use of those terms collectively producing a more nuanced account of the religious history of pre-Reformation England. Topics include the use of religious lyrics and tables of lessons as indirect rebuttals of Wycliffite claims; the social networks through which dissenters transmitted their ideas; dissenting and mainstream readings of Scripture; the ‘survival’ of Wycliffism in the run-up to Henry VIII’s reformation; and the fate of Wyclif and Wycliffism in later historiography. Leading contributors include Anne Hudson Alastair Minnis and Peter Marshall.
Hermes Christianus
The Intermingling of Hermetic Piety and Christian Thought
Hermetic theosophy originally an offspring of Egyptian religion spread throughout the ancient world from the Hellenistic age onwards and was welcomed by Christianity in Late Antiquity. Cultivated people in a Christian milieu were convinced that Hermetic piety and religion were the preparation expressed by heathen imagery of their own faith: Hermes a wise and pious philosopher in Egypt in the time of Moses received (so it was thought) the same revelation which would be manifested 1000 years later by Christ. At the end of the third century AD this belief did not perish with the end of the Roman Empire; rather it was taken up and explored during the French Renaissance of the twelfth century. In the fifteenth century Italian humanism supported by the rediscovery of Greek language and literature promoted a fresh new evaluation of the ancient Hermetic texts which continued to be considered and studied as pre-Christian documents. In the sixteenth century new interpretations of Christian Hermetism were explored until this connection between pagan and Christian was increasingly criticized by scholars who argued that Hermetism was neither as ancient as was thought nor as close to Christianity. The theory was abandoned in scientific milieux from the seventeenth century onwards whereas Hermetic theosophy on the contrary survived in esoteric circles.