Social network analysis has been established as a method of historical research for a considerable number of years. The combination of quantitative and qualitative methods enables social structures to be visualised and the activities of individual actors to be better understood. This study explores the extent to which social network analysis can be applied to a specific field of Reformation history, namely the opponents of Martin Luther and the Reformation. Examining the case of Johannes Cochlaeus, it is demonstrated that the availability of sources has a pivotal role in determining the informative value of network analyses. Furthermore, it is revealed that actors who have seldom been given due consideration find their place within the social network of Luther's opponents.
This paper examines the theology of John Boys, clergyman and Jacobean English postiller, concerning Christ's descent into hell. The Reformation debate on the descensus partially coincided with the development of the doctrine of the two states, and it is often assumed that Lutheran theologians nearly unanimously assigned a victorious descent into hell to the period of Christ's exaltation against the Reformed, who followed Calvin in allocating the descensus to his humiliation. However, examining John Boys's theology on the descent within the context of the wider development of the doctrine of Christ's descent into hell, I show that Boys provides an example of a Reformed theologian who places Christ's descent into hell within the state of exaltation. This bolsters the view of some historians who have argued that there were surprising intra-confessional differences in positions on the descensus.
Where and when did Reformed theologians first debate the imputed active obedience of Christ (IAOC)? Through previously overlooked correspondence, this article establishes that Reformed discourse on IAOC originated in spring 1565 when Heidelberg theologians Zacharias Ursinus and Caspar Olevianus favourably received Georg Karg's propositions, prompting concern from Heinrich Bullinger and Theodore Beza about potential division. The study documents how Reformed authorities resolved this controversy by 1570, designating the IAOC as adiaphora - permitting both pro - and contra-IAOC positions among the Reformed. This resolution, advocated particularly by Ursinus and Bullinger, prioritised ecclesial unity over doctrinal precision. The findings upend narratives of an early Reformed consensus on the IAOC, revealing instead theological diversity from the doctrine's inception. The article provides a chronological anchor for understanding early Reformed orthodox development and demonstrates the conscious coexistence of divergent views on the IAOC.
This article explores the role of family and kinship in religious conflict and its negotiation, chiefly through the case study of Catholic missions to England, c.1580-1679. It examines how family ties were subjugated to religious imperatives, but also incorporated into them, as missionaries sought the salvation of their families and proclaimed affective bonds as motivation. Sometimes, this subverted traditional authority paradigms, as demonstrated through texts in which sons - Protestant or Catholic - exhorted their parents to religious conversion. Evidence is also examined that family ties were important for the practicalities of clandestine Catholic ministry. The essay then considers the linguistic and affective triangle of family, religion and nation, whereby the English Mission was interpreted as a patriotic endeavour in which saving the patria was, in part, an extension of the imperative to save one's kin.
Many meditations and prayers on the passion were published by Bavarian presses at the end of the sixteenth century into the seventeenth. This article examines Jakob Feucht's popular Christian Pilgrimage (first printed in 1574), situating it in relation to Feucht's homiletic and apologetic publications, on one side, and to the broader flood of printed Catholic passion meditations, on the other. This broader flood is represented by the publishing career of Adam Walasser. I show that Feucht and Walasser, two widely published but little studied figures in post-Tridentine German Catholicism, aimed to use passion meditation to make distinctly Catholic Christians through a conjunction of inward, bodily, and communal practice; meditation was to deepen the Catholic selfhood of those who had been instructed by catechesis and preserved within the bounds of the Catholic church by apologetic. For Feucht and Walasser, the transformation of Catholics' perception of self, society, time, and space through passion meditation was the only sure defense against the scourge of Protestantism.
Handwritten letters played a key role in the spread and establishment of the Reformation. In view of the very limited possibilities for supra-regional communication in the sixteenth century, letters fulfilled an important function in the transmission of information. The practice of forming communities of opinion through correspondence, which was widespread among the humanists, was utilised and further developed by the reformers in order to create confessional communities of conviction. In its beginnings, writings in German which were printed in large numbers played a major role in spreading the Reformation. Later, in the second half of the sixteenth century, such publications, which often stood out for their eloquence and original ideas, played a lesser role. The focus was now increasingly on safeguarding the Reformation, which seemed threatened by warring factions and conflicts within the movement. Hand written letters now became even more important, as the example of Jakob Andreae shows.
The correspondence of Thomas Cromwell (1485?-1540) is a particularly precious tool for Henrician studies, as it contains valuable information and is easily available to researchers, having been entirely transcribed in 1902. However, some manuscripts have evaded this initial transcription, like manuscript Bruxelles Audience 1537, fo. 106-1v-2r. This manuscript is a letter written by Thomas Cromwell to Mary of Hungary, Regent of the Netherlands, to settle a judicial matter related to an English merchant whose goods were confiscated through what the English deem to be an abusive process. This unpublished letter therefore gives illuminating insights into Cromwell's posture and power, creating the possibility of discussing hierarchy and diplomatic relations between England and the Empire.
Helping the sick and dying has been one of the most important tasks of Christianity since the early church. Reformed and Lutheran churches made this ministry an integral part of their 'Protestant Mission' in the sixteenth century. In this context, the provisions in the church orders of the time played an important role as points of orientation and legal guidelines for what this ministry and pastoral care should look like in practice. This article investigates how Lutheran church orders from Nuremberg and Brandenburg-Ansbach and Reformed ones from Electoral Palatinate, Basel, and Zurich liturgically situated the service to the sick and dying and what role the Lord's Supper and the confession played in these contexts. This raises the question of the significance of community in these contexts.
This article examines J & uuml;rgen Habermas's public sphere model through a case study of the Unity of the Brethren (lat. Unitas Fratrum), a Protestant minority church in early modern Poland. In contrast to research examining the public sphere through the activity of the printing press, this study investigates the phenomenon through the lens of David Cassius's (1673-1734) handwritten correspondence. As a senior of Unity of the Brethren, Cassius played a key role in the church's communication and opinion-making processes. The paper demonstrates that Cassius, despite being deprived of political rights, actively participated in politics, defending the church and exerting political agency. The study reveals that, although the Unitas Fratrum was on the margins of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth's public sphere, it sought to articulate its demands, which were ultimately rejected by the dominant noble public.
This article provides a general introduction to the Protestant Church Ordinances of the Evangelical/ Lutheran and Reformed traditions. It focuses on the massive collection of these documents launched by Emil Sehling in the early twentieth century and now completed (24 volumes). The article begins with a discussion of the patterns employed in creating the church orders, arguing that they were rooted in late fifteenth-century models of secular and religious legislation. Contexts for initiating these reforms varied significantly, and the reformers and their administrative allies adapted approaches to address particular needs in their settings. The article then overviews the content of most church ordinances, looking at their contributions to doctrine (credenda), worship and liturgy (agenda), and ecclesiastical and secular structures (administranda).
This article presents four ways that demonstrate how Protestant church orders provided comfort and consolation to the laity in sixteenth century Germany, with specific focus on the sacraments of baptism and communion and their respective rituals. The turmoil that could accompany religious change demonstrated that reforms needed to be approached sensitively and implemented in ways that supported the laity as they adjusted to new confessional realities, the loss of past certainties, and changed ritual experiences. Existing literature considers how reformers comforted parishioners through their ministry, sermons, consolatory works and other practices but church orders traditionally have not been seen as belonging to this broader framework of consolation. Thus, exploring how consolation can be detected in the church orders situates them within the wider landscape of consolatory literature.
This article seeks to contribute to the growing body of scholarly literature that challenges the Weberian disenchantment thesis and its assumptions about the role of the Protestant Reformation in shaping the modern world. It does so by interacting with scholarship that has identified a distinctively Protestant version of enchantment associated with the Word. Drawing on an unlikely and heretofore untapped source to support and expand such scholarship, this article examines treatments of the Word in Evangelical Church Ordinances. It demonstrates that the framers of the Church Ordinances frequently used the language of the Eucharist and other sacraments to explain the ministry of the Word, and thereby expressed their belief in the 'real presence' of the divine in Scripture. The article thus shows that the 'enchanted Word' was not a mere theological sideshow in the Reformation; it was an essential feature of institutionalized Protestant religious life, something previous scholarship has not appreciated.
The Geneva Bible (1560) is well known to have influenced Protestant culture in Elizabethan England, as its texts have been detected in the literary works of some of the finest writers of the period. Still, the timing and circumstances of the translation's ascendancy in the English consciousness remain murky. This article uses the metrical psalms written by Elizabethan politician and lawyer Thomas Norton in 1560-1562 as a case study of the early impact of the Geneva Bible. Its source analysis of Norton's psalm versifications traces the immediate influence of the Geneva Bible on this man as he contributed to one of the most popular and long-lasting editions of anglophone psalmody: the Sternhold and Hopkins metrical psalms, which would continue to be printed well into the nineteenth century.
The question of whether Martin Luther's theology warrants the epithet 'mystical' has generated rival and divergent responses. Tracing developments in Luther's thought concerning the verbum increatum, this essay argues that Luther's decisive alteration to medieval mysticism rests on developments in his theology of the Word of God. Luther locates the soul's union with God in an act of radical trust in God's spoken promises, rather than in a protracted process of inner preparation, purgation, and the re-orientation of human love, and in doing so he effectively proposes a novel understanding of divine agency, presence, and mediation. What on the surface appears to be Luther's denial of God's immediacy in mystical experience is rather a reframing and intensification of God's immediacy in the spoken Word. The evangelical mystic does not understand Christ being begotten in the innermost depths of her being, but as herself being generated of the Word of God.
This article expands on the generally accepted hypothesis in cultural history, that numerous migrants, exiles, or expatriates were among the most prolific translators in early modern Europe. It examines Dutch and German translators of English devotional literature in the seventeenth century in terms of the following framework: the extent to which these individuals were involved in migration, and the nature of the relationship between border crossings and translation. I will compare several highly mobile translators from the Hartlib circle, with the three most prolific Dutch and German translators of devotional literature during this period. My findings suggest that it was not migration but mobility that stimulated the collection and translation of devotional literature. Mobility, however, was not the only determinant.
This paper examines Petrus van Mastricht's critique of the Cartesian doctrine of the Trinity in his Novitatum cartesianarum gangraena (1677). Mastricht opposed two types of Cartesian approaches to the Trinity. One was by Nicolaus Smiterus, who claimed that the Trinity could be proven rationally. The other was by Christoph Wittich, who argued that the doctrine could not be discussed rationally. Mastricht rejected both positions as benefiting anti-Trinitarian heretics such as the Socinians. Instead, Mastricht took a middle course between Smiterus and Wittich, arguing that while the Trinity could not be proven rationally, its credibility could be enhanced by rational argument.
Clerical celibacy and clerical marriage were contested issues in the Henrician reformation. The juxtaposition of official proclamations and clerical protest helps shed light on the complexity of the issue. At an official level, the prohibition, punishment, and eventual outlawing of clerical marriage was driven by Henry VIII's religious programme. From 1509 to 1537, the King opposed clerical marriage and sought to suppress it. From 1537 onwards, Henry VIII and the English Parliament moved towards making it illegal, which the Act of the Six Articles (1539) accomplished. Popular reactions varied, one example being William Turner, who married in the aftermath of the Six Articles despite taking vows of chastity as a deacon. Turner's protest against the Six Articles is an underappreciated case study of clerical responses to official proclamations, and his marriage and writings provide a fascinating test case for the reaction against the imposition of clerical celibacy in the Six Articles.
The dimension of privacy in the context of early modernity has become an important element of study of daily life at the time. The Livre Synodal contains information regarding the affairs of the French Reformed religious community in the United Provinces. The Livre Synodal is a source not for religious affairs but for matters relating to privacy and the life of the community. Based on two case studies, that of De La Rouille in Middelburg and Huguenin in Leiden and Wesel, the author assesses the perspectives of privacy existing in these, and analyses them through the prism of the so-called heuristic zones of privacy.
