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 The Transformation of the Pastoral Ministry

Amy Nelson Burnett

in Teaching the Reformation: Ministers and Their Message in Basel, 1529-1629

In the century after the Reformation, Basel’s clergy gradually met the criteria of professionalization. Central to this transformation was the church’s control over the education and appointment of ... More

In the century after the Reformation, Basel’s clergy gradually met the criteria of professionalization. Central to this transformation was the church’s control over the education and appointment of its clergy. Basel may not have been typical, but it clearly illustrates trends that occurred in other, larger territories over a somewhat longer time period. The case of Basel also reveals the important connection between the development of rhetoric and dialectic instruction at the university and the evolution of both theology and preaching, and it indicates some possible differences between Lutheran and Reformed preaching. It questions the older interpretation of Basel’s confessional history, indicating instead the persistence of a non-confessional form of Protestantism into the 1570s. Together with the Senate’s relative lack of concern with church affairs during this time, this suggests that confessionalization, if defined as a process imposed from above, did not begin until the last two decades of the century, coinciding with the entry of the third generation into the ministry.Less

Conclusion

Regina Pörtner

in The Counter-Reformation in Central Europe: Styria 1580-1630

This book demonstrates that the Counter-Reformation of the 16th and 17th centuries contributed to the process of state building in Inner Austria in various ways, most important among which were the ... More

This book demonstrates that the Counter-Reformation of the 16th and 17th centuries contributed to the process of state building in Inner Austria in various ways, most important among which were the enhancement of the power of the Habsburg Monarchy and the creation of an ideological formula for the consensus between the dynasty and the provincial nobilities who represented the political nation. On the other hand, there was the case of Hungary and the unsolved problem of crypto-Protestantism which illustrated the dialectics of a confessional policy that already carried the germ of self-destruction. In the course of the 18th century, it was to succumb to the dissolvent, secularising forces of the Enlightenment, whose ‘cosmopolitan’ expansionism was in turn checked by the countercurrents of nascent nationalism. The age of confessionalisation and aspiring confessional absolutism thus left an ambivalent legacy of repression and revolt, to be rejected or assimilated by the modern national movements of the peoples in the Habsburg Monarchy.Less

Introduction: Confessionalisation and Erudition in Early Modern Europe: A Comparative Overview of a Neglected Episode in the History of the Humanities

Dmitri Levitin

in Confessionalisation and Erudition in Early Modern Europe: An Episode in the History of the Humanities

What effect did the structural process of religious confessionalisation have on the production, publication, and dissemination of works of erudition, and on shaping those aspects of European ... More

What effect did the structural process of religious confessionalisation have on the production, publication, and dissemination of works of erudition, and on shaping those aspects of European intellectual activity that have come to be known as the ‘humanities’? This introductory overview offers a comparative assessment of that question, focussing separately on each confessional space: Catholic, Reformed, and Lutheran, and the individual regions within each. It stresses the importance of confessional investment in erudite practices for stimulating their growth and development. At the same time, it emphasises the importance of trans-confessional emulation as an agent of intellectual change. It is suggested that early modern erudition and the conditions in which it developed should be conceptualised on their own terms, rather than as a triumphant precursor of the ‘modern’ humanities or a pale remnant of the golden age of a pre-confessional Renaissance humanism.Less

Introduction

Serhii Plokhy

in The Cossacks and Religion in Early Modern Ukraine

This book explores the interaction of Cossackdom and religion, specifically the role of the Cossacks in the religious wars that began in Ukraine in the late 16th century and the influence of religion ... More

This book explores the interaction of Cossackdom and religion, specifically the role of the Cossacks in the religious wars that began in Ukraine in the late 16th century and the influence of religion on the ideology, social and political behavior, and cultural identity of the Cossacks. Another aspect of this theme is the effect of Cossack intervention in religious affairs on the Ukraine's Orthodox Church and its relations with other churches and religious groups. The period covered in this book, extending from the late 16th century to the middle of the 17th, was one of the growth and development of Ukrainian Cossackdom as a distinct social estate. It discusses the effect of confessionalisation on religious life in Ukraine and how it influenced the fate and outlook of Ukrainian Cossackdom.Less

The Religious Crisis

Serhii Plokhy

in The Cossacks and Religion in Early Modern Ukraine

The events of the last quarter of the 16th century in the Kyivan metropolitanate largely determined the course of further ecclesiastical development, playing a decisive role in the history of the ... More

The events of the last quarter of the 16th century in the Kyivan metropolitanate largely determined the course of further ecclesiastical development, playing a decisive role in the history of the Ukrainian lands. The new era made unprecedented demands on the leaders of the Kyivan church, its institutions, and the mass of the faithful, while expanding contacts with the West brought the powerful influences of the Reformation and Counter-Reformation to bear on the Ukrainian lands. The impact of confessionalisation, which intensified both internal and external pressures on the old traditional structures of the Kyivan metropolitanate, proved overwhelming, and the church, failing to withstand them, split in two and sparked a religious crisis between Eastern Orthodoxy and Roman Catholicism. One branch remained under the authority of the patriarchs of Constantinople, while the other subordinated itself to the pope of Rome. The growth of Counter-Reformation tendencies in the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth had a great influence on the development of religious life in Ukraine.Less

Order, Religion, and Nation

Serhii Plokhy

in The Cossacks and Religion in Early Modern Ukraine

This chapter examines the relationship, if any, between Cossackdom and nationhood, how social and national identities were interconnected in Ruthenian society, and the role of religion in that ... More

This chapter examines the relationship, if any, between Cossackdom and nationhood, how social and national identities were interconnected in Ruthenian society, and the role of religion in that relationship. It focuses on the changing social, religious, and ethnocultural image of the Cossacks in the Ruthenian and Polish writings of the period. The Union of Lublin (1569) between Poland and the Grand Duchy of Lithuania not only established an administrative boundary between Poland and Lithuania more or less coinciding with the present-day Ukrainian-Belarusian border but also united Galicia and Western Podilia with the remaining Ukrainian territories to the east. The link between ethnicity and religion took on importance for Rus' long before early modern times because of its location on the boundary between Western and Eastern Christianity and its Islamic neighbors. In post-Brest Ukraine and Belarus, confessionalisation promoted the formation of new varieties of religious consciousness that were no longer shaped by allegiance to a once united Kyivan church but by loyalty to one of the supranational denominations: Orthodoxy, Catholicism, or some branch of Protestantism.Less

Religion and Nation

S. J. Connolly

in Contested Island: Ireland 1460-1630

By the early 17th century, the blurred religious allegiances of previous decades were rapidly giving way to a clear confessionalization. The Protestant Church of Ireland had become a colonial ... More

By the early 17th century, the blurred religious allegiances of previous decades were rapidly giving way to a clear confessionalization. The Protestant Church of Ireland had become a colonial institution, in which a clergy overwhelmingly recruited from England ministered to an almost exclusively settler population. Meanwhile, the Catholicism of the Gaelic Irish and Old English was being reorganized along Counter-Reformation lines. Conflict between the government and the Old English reached a peak at the parliament of 1613. A later agreement to trade religious toleration for assistance in resolving the crown's financial difficulties (‘the Graces’) only confirmed the estrangement that now existed. The writings of the growing community of Irish exiles in Catholic Europe reflect the development of a militant Catholic ideology. By contrast, the dominant theme within Ireland itself was the continued attempt to seek an accommodation with the new political and social order.Less

The Bredenburg Disputes

Jonathan I. Israel

in Radical Enlightenment: Philosophy and the Making of Modernity 1650-1750

Among the most protracted of the Dutch controversies was the bitter quarrel which erupted around the well-meaning figure of Johannes Bredenburg, a dispute which reached such a pitch of intensity that ... More

Among the most protracted of the Dutch controversies was the bitter quarrel which erupted around the well-meaning figure of Johannes Bredenburg, a dispute which reached such a pitch of intensity that it eventually generated a formal schism in the Dutch Collegiant movement. A fringe Church in numbers, the Collegiants, from their origins in the second quarter of the 17th century down to the early 18th, were disproportionately prominent in Dutch intellectual debate owing to the special emphasis they placed on the intellectual and spiritual freedom of the individual. As such they were both a new and highly innovative phenomenon in the wider European, as well as Dutch, context, reflecting in a theological mode the wider psychological and spiritual reaction against the pressures of confessionalization gripping western culture in the late 17th century. The Bredenburg disputes were the climax of a long process reaching back to the 1650s when a fringe of Socinian, rationalist Collegiants, including Jelles and Pieter Balling, became immersed in Cartesianism and formed links with the radical philosophical clique around Van den Enden, Meyer, and Spinoza.Less

Introduction

Arnoud S. Q. Visser

in Reading Augustine in the Reformation: The Flexibility of Intellectual Authority in Europe, 1500-1620

This chapter introduces the reader to Augustine of Hippo and his varied reception in the long sixteenth century. It explains the aims, scope, and organization of the book and situates its main ... More

This chapter introduces the reader to Augustine of Hippo and his varied reception in the long sixteenth century. It explains the aims, scope, and organization of the book and situates its main arguments in the context of recent research in the fields of Reformation history (including the confessionalization paradigm, the concept of Augustinianism and recent studies of the reception of the Church fathers), Renaissance Humanism, and the history of reading.Less

The German Territories and Cities After 1555

Joachim Whaley

in Germany and the Holy Roman Empire: Volume I: Maximilian I to the Peace of Westphalia, 1493-1648

After 1555 princes and urban magistrates faced the task of re‐establishing order and equilibrium. German historians have generally described this as a process of confessionalisation that led to state ... More

After 1555 princes and urban magistrates faced the task of re‐establishing order and equilibrium. German historians have generally described this as a process of confessionalisation that led to state formation. In fact, however, the German territories remained subject to the authority of the emperor and the Reich and the process of confessionalisation was not as rigorous as many have claimed. Significant developments took place in administration, finance and taxation, education and the economic activities of the princes. The court emerged once more as a central institution; in cities, ruling councils tended to aspire turn themselves into closed oligarchies. From the 1570s, however, governments found themselves challenged by the need to respond to apparently increasingly severe social and economic crises. This had implications for the way that they dealt with the poor, with minorities such as the Jews and the gypsies, and with the phenomenon of witchcraft.Less

Vera Philosophia cum sacra Theologia nusquam pugnat: Keckermann on Philosophy, Theology, and the Problem of Double Truth

Richard A. Muller

in After Calvin: Studies in the Development of a Theological Tradition

The study discussed in this chapter, of Barholomaus Keckermann, not only addresses the issue of the late Reformation or early orthodox approaches to philosophy as a necessary element in the academy ... More

The study discussed in this chapter, of Barholomaus Keckermann, not only addresses the issue of the late Reformation or early orthodox approaches to philosophy as a necessary element in the academy or university curriculum, it also examines the issue of the Reformed reappropriation of aspects of the older tradition in the era of the institutionalization of Protestantism, what might be viewed as the intellectual analogue of what various social historians have called “confessionalization”. Keckermann's analysis of the problem of faith, reason, and double truth appears as an exercise both in the positive reappraisal and in the delimitation of the bounds of philosophy.Less

Conclusion

Brent S. Sirota

in The Christian Monitors: The Church of England and the Age of Benevolence, 1680-1730

This chapter considers the effect of postrevolutionary Anglican benevolence on the structure and character of British national life in the mid-eighteenth century. It argues that although reactionary ... More

This chapter considers the effect of postrevolutionary Anglican benevolence on the structure and character of British national life in the mid-eighteenth century. It argues that although reactionary forces pressed for a reclamation and reconstruction of sacerdotal authority, a burgeoning Anglican voluntary sector moved toward continuing social engagement and institutional innovation. In so doing, it fashioned works of Anglican confessionalization into monuments of national benevolence. The result was the making of modern civil society in Britain, a spilt religion: moral rather than confessional, associational rather than parochial, benevolent rather than sacramental — a space perhaps where individuals may be improved, but not saved.Less

The Pastoral Vocation

Scott M. Manetsch

in Calvin's Company of Pastors: Pastoral Care and the Emerging Reformed Church, 1536-1609

Chapter 3 explores the view of vocation and ordination held by Calvin and his colleagues. The ministers’ responsibility to proclaim the Christian gospel was of primary importance to their sense of ... More

Chapter 3 explores the view of vocation and ordination held by Calvin and his colleagues. The ministers’ responsibility to proclaim the Christian gospel was of primary importance to their sense of vocation. The chapter summarizes this public theology, and then explores the process by which ministerial candidates in Geneva were recruited, elected, and ordained to pastoral posts between 1536 and 1609. The final section of this chapter recounts the protracted struggle between the magistrates and city ministers over the prerogative of pastoral election (as seen in the affair of Michel Le Faucheur), and considers it in light of the contemporary model of confessionalization.Less

Discord, Dissent, and Division: England, 1534–1543

Greg Walker

in John Heywood: Comedy and Survival in Tudor England

Even if we cannot follow Heywood’s engagement with the fine details of political events in his work in these years in quite the way that we could through his earlier interludes, it is nonetheless ... More

Even if we cannot follow Heywood’s engagement with the fine details of political events in his work in these years in quite the way that we could through his earlier interludes, it is nonetheless possible, and important, to track his path against the wider picture of English Reformation politics, the advance of royal policy and the reactions it provoked, in order to see how the twists and turns of Fortune’s favour affected him, his family, and influential patrons such as Mary Tudor, and how and why Heywood was brought to his own crisis of conscience in the winter of 1543. This chapter examines Heywood’s fortunes in the years following More’s death against the curious contortions of Henry VIII’s religious policy, describing the evolution of Henry’s Erasmian ‘middle way’ in religion, and the tensions that it permitted and exacerbated, setting the scene for Heywood’s condemnation for treason for denying the Royal Supremacy in 1542.Less

European Catholicism (1500–1700)

David W. Kling

in A History of Christian Conversion

The long Catholic Reformation, which lasted from the sixteenth to the eighteenth century, is one of the most active, intense, and expansive in the history of Christian conversion. This chapter begins ... More

The long Catholic Reformation, which lasted from the sixteenth to the eighteenth century, is one of the most active, intense, and expansive in the history of Christian conversion. This chapter begins with an examination of the conversions of two profoundly influential Catholics from the Iberian Peninsula (Ignatius of Loyola and Teresa of Ávila) and then considers efforts by the religious orders to re-Catholicize Europe. With the Jesuits leading the way, the Church evangelized the masses, drawing them into a personal relationship with God by encouraging the very things Protestants condemned: cults of intercession, pilgrimages, concern with purgatory, feast days, adoration of Christ in the Eucharist, and devotion to the saints. The chapter then moves to a discussion of conversion in the context of religiously mixed communities (Catholics and Protestants) in the Low Countries and France and ends with a discussion of Pierre Bayle’s defense of free conscience as the basis of true conversion.Less

Introduction: Turning “Rumi” Conversion to Islam, Fashioning of the Ottoman Imperial Ideology, and Interconfessional Relations in the Early Modern Mediterranean Context

in Contested Conversions to Islam: Narratives of Religious Change in the Early Modern Ottoman Empire

This book explores the process of conversion to Islam and how it was related to various aspects of gradual confessional and political polarization in the Ottoman Empire. Drawing on texts from the ... More

This book explores the process of conversion to Islam and how it was related to various aspects of gradual confessional and political polarization in the Ottoman Empire. Drawing on texts from the Lands of Rum produced in the period between the fifteenth and seventeenth centuries, it examines whether and to what extent the concept of confessionalization, with the accompanying concept of “social disciplining,” is relevant to developments in early modern Islamdom. The book focuses on Rumeli, where conversion emerged as an important phenomenon in the fourteenth century with the appearance of the Ottomans. In order to elucidate the nature of early modern Ottoman history and the phenomenon of conversion, it analyzes the ongoing dialogue of Ottoman cultural discourse with the Mediterranean heritage of the Lands of Rum. It also discusses how the notion of conversion is used in many Ottoman sources authored by born Muslims and converts to Islam to offer a vision of what it meant to be a good Muslim during the period.Less

Illuminated by the Light of Islam and the Glory of the Ottoman Sultanate: Self-Narratives of Conversion to Islam in the Age of Confessionalization

in Contested Conversions to Islam: Narratives of Religious Change in the Early Modern Ottoman Empire

This chapter examines Ottoman self-narratives of conversion, focusing on five texts dating from the late sixteenth through the early eighteenth centuries. The texts have been attributed to Murad b. ... More

This chapter examines Ottoman self-narratives of conversion, focusing on five texts dating from the late sixteenth through the early eighteenth centuries. The texts have been attributed to Murad b. Abdullah, Mehmed, Yusuf b. Abi Abdüdeyyan, İbrahim Müteferrika, and a former priest who became a mystic also named Mehmed. A close reading of these narratives suggests that some Ottoman converts readily participated in the debate about the correct rituals and the most authentic, scripture-based path toward salvation. These conversion narratives promoted Islam as the religion that promises salvation and the Qur'an as the true word of God, in part by bringing together the tradition of medieval Islamic anti-Christian polemics (the so-called reddiye) with Christian humanist sensibilities for textual criticism. The chapter also considers some aspects of confessionalization in the Ottoman Empire and the role of the self-narratives of conversion to Islam in this historical context.Less