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Following the death of Maximus the Confessor in 662 there was a centuries-long silence about the filioque from Eastern sources although the West continued to embrace and teach the doctrine as an integral part of the orthodox faith. However, with the beginning of the iconoclastic controversy in the eighth century, tension between Byzantium and the West increased (exacerbated by the political and cultural divisions created by the Charlemagne’s imperial coronation), and the filioque was quickly catapulted from the obscure theological backwaters to became a casus belli. This was especially true during the time of the so-called Photian Schism when the terms of the debate were framed as a simple choice—either the Spirit proceeded from the Father alone (as Photius and the East maintained) or he proceeded from the Father and the Son (according to the Carolingian teaching). It was this dynamic that came to characterize the filioque debates for the next several centuries.

Chapter 1 introduces the book’s main argument that Bucer’s doctrine of justification is consistent through the period of the religious colloquies of Leipzig, Hagenau, Worms, and Regensburg. This chapter also provides a brief survey of the main trends in Bucer research.

Chapter 5 examines the agreement reached at the Colloquy of Regensburg (1541) on justification (including the evaluation of formulations on the doctrine of justification from important preceding colloquies and conferences). This chapter argues that Bucer believed that the evangelical understanding of justification was present in the formulations from Leipzig (1539), Worms (1540–1541), and Regensburg (1541) and that they are compatible with Bucer’s earlier view found in the Romans Commentary. For Bucer reform could not be achieved at the expense of the truth of justification as he understood it.

The Reformation transformed the idea of ‘conversion’, seeing it as a moment of perceiving the truth and a transformation of the soul, shown in the overwhelming perception of new truth followed by the decision to act upon this experience. Conversion was thus in theory not a process but a moment, but among the leading Reformers it was in reality more of a slow process of enlightenment resulting from reading, thought, and teaching. In the case of Luther, it is impossible to pinpoint any moment of conversion. His ideas grew as he was forced to defend himself against the accusation of heresy and therefore he had to define exactly what he thought. The crucial moments were the Leipzig disputation in July 1519 and the Diet of Worms in spring 1521, and the key theological point became the doctrine of the mass. Luther's refusal to recant at Worms and his having to go into hiding in the Wartburg fortress turned him into a legend, admired and hated for saying what he thought.

This chapter discusses the earliest medieval writers who mentioned impotence magic, and whose discussions formed the basis for later ideas about the subject. The first of these was Hincmar of Rheims. Hincmar was the first writer to distinguish impotence magic from other forms of love magic, when he argued that, unlike love magic, it was a ground for annulling a marriage. His discussion of annulment was the basis for later medieval canon law on the subject. Hincmar also seems to have included information gathered from his own observation, as did other early medieval discussions of impotence magic, such as the penitential of Burchard of Worms. The chapter also discusses Constantinus Africanus, the earliest medieval medical writer to suggest cures for impotence magic. All of these writers associated impotence magic with women.

Postcolonial Bergsonstudies the way Bergson’s “action at a distance” occurs in the encounter between the work of the French philosopher and the work of two thinkers from the colonial world: Muhammad Iqbal (1877–1938), from India, and Léopold Sédar Senghor (1906–2001), from Senegal. Diagne lays out the outline for the four different chapters covered in Postcolonial Bergson.

This chapter is also concerned with the Solomon bar Simson Chronicle, and it aims to show how the editor treated the Mainz Anonymous and made it the basis for his report on the events in Speyer, Worms, and Mainz. It states that the longest unit found in the Solomon bar Simson Chronicle is a description of the fate of three major Rhineland Jewish communities: Speyer, Worms, and Mainz. The chapter discusses the parallels found between these two narratives and the possible relationship between these two compositions. One section looks at the deletions and the additions that were made, while another identifies the central themes in the recurrent editorial glosses to the Speyer-Worms-Mainz story.

The high rates of both maternal and infant mortality are, in many cases, attributable to dangerous folk traditions and medicinal teas, ill-trained doctors and midwives, and women’s multiple pregnancies and lack of prenatal care. Other customs, no longer being practiced, include a delay in naming children, and adherence to therapies thought to prevent common childhood maladies (thrush, hives, teething, worms) that sometimes caused death. The belief that a child could die as a result of being loved too much is contrasted with examples loving too little (infanticide). The chapter concludes with a discussion of the many ways in which children had to assume adult roles and help during the deaths and funerals of other children.

This chapter examines the religious conversions in sixteenth-century England. Some historians have rightly warned us that there was more to the Reformation than a succession of individual religious conversions, noting that most people didn't undergo one. But without such conversions there could have been no Reformation, and attempting to untangle them draws us to the mysterious seed beds in which change first took root. For historians have to make sense of a paradox: that a convert's radical rejection of the old and familiar could not come out of nowhere; that it must somehow be grounded in earlier attitudes and experiences. The chapter first considers the English authorities' response to the Ninety-Five Theses of Martin Luther and to ‘Lutheran’ heresy before discussing William Tyndale's Worms New Testament and the public abjuration of heresy. It also analyses the deep and bitter divisions between heretics and Catholics over religion.

After briefly mentioning some Reformation-related commemorations that took place after the tercentenary in 1817, this chapter profiles the 400th anniversary of Martin Luther’s birth in 1883 as it was celebrated in Germany (which had achieved national unity in 1871) and in the United States. It argues that while, again, older religious motivations persisted, these commemorations bore witness to a pungent nationalism and/or to a type of “civil religion” as it manifested itself in these two nation-states. Throughout, this chapter also looks at some of the monuments that were erected in the nineteenth century to commemorate Martin Luther and the Reformation.