This study offers a new reading of the Latin tombstone from Quanzhou (Zayton), challenging its traditional association with Andrew of Perugia, the third Catholic bishop of Zayton. Based on on-site investigations, a recent rubbing, and high-resolution photographs, the study identifies the tomb's primary occupant as "Nicholas of Paris", probably an archbishop of Khanbaliq or a bishop in the East, with at least one other Christian, possibly a woman, buried nearby. By examining papal records and Franciscan accounts, the study suggests Nicholas of Molano or a similarly educated Franciscan as a likely candidate. This identification provides new insights into the presence and continuity of Latin Christianity in Yuan China, particularly within the archbishopric of Khanbaliq during the 1350s and 1360s, and underscores the importance of further research on the medieval Christian community in China.
Roland Herbert Bainton (1894-1984) must be counted among the most influential American scholars of the German Reformation in the 20th century. He first introduced himself to a broader audience with "Here I Stand," a biography of Martin Luther which became especially popular in post-war Germany. However, it still seems to be unknown to most that Bainton can be portrayed as a key person within the transatlantic community of his time. After World War II, Bainton corresponded within a large network of Protestant academia in Germany. His correspondence gives witness to a wide array of issues ranging from the debate revolving around the rearmament of Germany or the purported dangers of Marxism, up to the praise for Bainton's portrayal of Luther by famed German theologians. This study attempts to offer yet another source of contemporary church history as it sheds new light on debates in ethics, politics, and theological scholarship among German protestants directly after World War II. It might also be read as a study of organized Christian humanitarian aid and how it brought about a lasting paradigm shift within Germany's Protestant scene that remains relevant up on to this day.
The concept of the Lord's Supper is the most distinctive feature of the Lutheran Reformation. This article presents two of Martin Luther's Lord's Supper treatises that have not yet been acknowledged by scholarship and that have come down to us in the Codices Palatini Germanici. After locating them within Luther's treatises on the Lord's Supper, discussing their source value as "Erinnerungsstucke" (Volker Leppin) and the role of Johann Aurifaber Vimariensis as a distributor of knowledge of Luther's writings after the reformer's death in 1546, the article concludes by examining the key points of the two treatises.
The contribution attempts to provide some critical reflections on the history of the Synodicon Orientate (SO) and initial insights into the literary and theological classification of this complex theological work. The thoughts are motivated by the recent publication of the Synodal Acts of the East as COGD V/2(42) where most of the surviving SO texts are placed in the context of miscellaneous Syriac Synodal Acts. A view that takes into account the SO as a whole and takes the theological and historiographical program of its redactor serious might, it is argued, open up fresh approach to this collection of texts which is so crucial for the history of the Eastern churches.
In the early Reformation, pedagogically orientated confessions written by staunch followers of the protestant movement came to have great and far-reaching importance. They influenced both lay people as well as educated theologians. Particular emphasis can be placed on the confessional articles in which the Reformation's guiding principles of teaching and conversion are methodically conceptualised and published as pamphlets. In the following articles, this religious belief in communicating the new path to salvation through education is demonstrated: those of the lay preacher Sebastian Lotzer, a citizen of the Imperial City of Memmingen and adherent of Luther's theological principles and Zwingli's political opinion, as well as Benedikt Gretzinger, a town clerk of Reutlingen who fearlessly, through his conviction in the Bible, opposed the Interim of Charles V. In the pamphlets of both ethical ideas of humanism are also evident. Finally, it is about the articles of the Lutheran Arsacius Seehofer, which were not published by himself(340); he was forced to recant his faith. But in establishing a Lutherian church order in Wurttemberg, Arsacius Seehofer contributed to the training of still-lacking Reformation preachers with his homiletic textbook Enarrationes evangeliorum dominicalium. The religious concepts of teaching found in the articles later came to canonically shape the catechisms.
