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This volume, a sequel to the author's earlier book The Beauty of the Cross, carries the study of Christian soteriology into the Renaissance, Reformation and Counter‐Reformation eras. Drawing on original documents and classic works of art and music, it uses the theology of the passion to exemplify the parallels and the divergences between conceptual and aesthetic theologies of this era, which represented a crucial turning point in both religion and the arts. The book examines the two great revolutionary movements that gave birth to the modern West, the Renaissance and the Protestant Reformation, showing how they affected each other and transformed Christian thinking and imagination. After an introductory section dealing with a “paradigmatic” artistic portrayal of the Passion, each chapter examines the “theoretical” as well as the “aesthetic” mediations of the theology of the Passion of Christ and its relationship to human salvation. The theologies of Savonarola, Vincent Ferrer, Gabriel Biel and the nominalists, Luther, Calvin, Robert Bellarmine, and the Council of Trent are examined as examples of the early Catholic Reformation, the Protestant Reformation, and the Catholic Counter‐Reformation. These are placed in correlation to the new situation of art in the era of Frà Angelico, Leonardo, Michelangelo, Dürer, Cranach, and the Mannerists. In addition to specifically theological themes, the book explores the effects of theology and preaching on the arts, examining the iconoclasm of some of the early Reformers, the use of pictorial art in service of the word in Lutheranism, and the regulation of the arts by the Council of Trent.

During the Enlightenment, scholars guided by a new vision of a post-theological age did not simply investigate the Bible, they remade it. In place of the familiar scriptural Bibles that belonged to Christian and Jewish communities, they created a new form: the academic Bible. This book examines the creation of the academic Bible. Beginning with the fragmentation of biblical interpretation in the centuries after the Reformation, it shows how the weakening of scriptural authority in the Western churches altered the role of biblical interpretation. In contexts shaped by skepticism and religious strife, interpreters increasingly operated on the Bible as a text to be managed by critical tools. These developments prepared the way for scholars to formalize an approach to biblical study shaped by classical philology and oriented toward the statist vision of the new universities and their sponsors. Focusing on a renowned German scholar of the period, Johann David Michaelis (1717–1791) of Göttingen, this book explores the ways that critics reconceived the role of the Bible. The founders of modern biblical criticism preserved the cultural authority of the Bible, yet they did so by pushing scriptural Bibles and religious reading to the margins of academic discourse. This book offers a new account of the origins of biblical studies, illuminating the relation of the Bible to churchly readers, theological exegesis, and academic criticism. It explains why, in an age of religious resurgence, modern biblical criticism may no longer be in a position to serve as the Bible’s disciplinary gatekeeper.

Martin Bucer has been predominantly portrayed as a diplomat, who attempted to reconcile divergent theological views, sometimes at any costs, or as a pragmatic pastor, who was more concerned with ethics than theology. These representations have led to the view that Bucer was a theological light-weight, a Vermittlungstheologe, rightly placed in the shadow of Luther and Calvin. This book argues differently. Bucer was an ecclesial diplomat and he was a pragmatic pastor, yet his ecclesial and practical approaches to reforming the church were guided by coherent theological convictions. Central to his theology was his understanding of the doctrine of justification, which the book argues has an integrity of its own and has been imprecisely represented as intentionally conciliatory (i.e. as Vermittlungstheologie). It was this solid doctrine that guided his irenicism and acted as a foundation for entering into discussions with Catholics between 1539 and 1541. He was consistent in his approach, and did not sacrifice his theological convictions for ecclesial expediency. His understanding was an accepted evangelical perspective on justification, one to be commended along with those of Luther and Calvin.

This book deals with Bible translation and its development from Antiquity to the Reformation. Taking the Hebrew Masoretic Text of Genesis as Old Testament Vorlage, it examines corresponding verses from five translations: Septuagint, Vulgate, Luther's Bible, Tyndale and the Authorized Version, and the Dutch State Translation. The context is the challenge mounted by feminist scholarship, particularly those scholars of the ‘second wave’, who have tried and convicted Scripture of androcentricity and misogyny. Translated passages in Genesis 1–4 that deal with the male‐female dynamic are subjected to detailed analysis, tracing linguistic and ideological processes and seeking to determine the extent of interaction between contemporary culture and translation. The degree and development of androcentricity in these passages in both Hebrew and translated texts are likewise taken into account. Each chapter dealing with a specific translation consists of two parts: the historical/cultural background of period and translator(s), particularly with regard to women, and a close exegesis of the verses in question. Results point to the Hebrew text revealing significant androcentricity, with the Septuagint, possibly influenced by Greek philosophy, emphasizing the patriarchal elements. This trend persists through the Vulgate and even Luther's Bible — though less so in the English and Dutch versions — and suggests that the translators must be at least partly responsible for an androcentric text becoming the justification for the oppression of women. Each section dealing with textual analysis is sub‐divided into the same groups of verses: male and female (1:26–28), man (2:7,9,15–17), woman (2:18–25), seeing (3:1–13), consequences (3:14–24), generation (4:1–2,17,25).

Scholarship on Middle English romance has done little to access the textual and bibliographical continuity of this remarkable literary tradition into the 16th century and its impact on Elizabethan works. To an even greater extent, Spenserian scholarship has failed to investigate the significant and complex debts The Faerie Queene owes to medieval native verse romance and Malory's Le Morte D'arthur. This book accordingly offers a comprehensive study of the impact of Middle English romance on The Faerie Queene. It employs the concept of memory, in which both Middle English romance writers and Spenser show specific interest, in building a sense of the thematic, generic, and cultural complexity of the native romance tradition. The memorial character of Middle English romance resides in its intertextuality and its frequent presentation of narrative events as historical and consequently the basis for a favourable sense of local or even national identity. Spenser's memories of native romance involve a more troubled engagement with that tradition of providential national history as well as an endeavour to see in pre-Reformation romance a prophetic and objective authority for Protestant belief.

This book investigates how Syon Abbey responded to the religious turbulence of the 1520s and 1530s. It examines the eleven books three brothers — William Bonde, John Fewterer, and Richard Whitford — had printed during this period and argues that the Bridgettines used vernacular printing to engage with religious and political developments that threatened their understanding of orthodox faith. Through these works — and their some twenty-six editions — the Abbey presented itself as part of the vanguard of the Church, fighting heterodoxy with a three-fold commitment to reformed spiritual leadership, vernacular theology and the spiritual education of the laity. It used its printed books to augment inferior parochial instruction; bolster orthodox faith and contradict evangelical argument; resist Henry VIII's desire for ecclesiastical supremacy; and defend the monastic way of life. The book has three principal aims. First, to continue the debate about the nature of late medieval Catholicism by directing attention to one community that publicly proclaimed a very specific Catholic identity in the early sixteenth century that was not uncritical of traditional religion. Second, to highlight the dynamic nature of that identity. Although Syon energetically contested its opponents' claims to a ‘Catholic’ identity and insisted on its own ability to rigidly define heresy, it took advantage of the fluidity of religious identity in this period to forge a public image which might bolster lay faith in traditional religion. This identity was in continuous dialogue with evangelicalism and far from static. Third, to emphasise the importance and dynamism of conservative vernacular theology in this period: it's capacity to recognize, and engage with, the lay desire for spiritual self-determination, while responding robustly to threats to traditional religion.

In present-day America, the topic of certitude is much debated. On one side, commentators like Charles Krauthammer urge us to achieve “moral clarity”. On the other, those like George Will contend that the greatest present threat to civilization is an excess of certitude. This book points out that Europe in the 16th century was preoccupied with similar concerns. Both the desire for certainty, especially religious certainty, and warnings against certainty permeated this earlier era. The book analyzes the pervading questions about certitude and doubt in the terms and contexts of a wide variety of thinkers during this time of competing truths. The Protestant Reformation was the wellspring of this debate, which expressed itself in terms of questions about salvation, authority, the rise of skepticism, the outbreak of religious violence, the discernment of spirits, and the ambiguous relationship between appearance and reality. Repeatedly, the book says, we find the recurring fear of deception. It examines the history of theological polemics and debates as well as other genres to shed light on the progress of this controversy. Among the texts the book draws on are Montaigne's Essays, the mystical writings of Teresa of Avila, the diary, letters, and treatises of St. Ignatius, and the dramas of Shakespeare. The result is not a book about theology, but rather a book about the way in which the concern with certitude determined the theology, polemics, and literature of the age.

For centuries historians have offered often bitterly contradictory answers to the question of who exactly was Thomas Cranmer. Although Cranmer was a key participant in the changes to English life brought about by the Reformation, his reticent nature and lack of extensive personal writings have left a vacuum that in the past has too often been filled by scholarly prejudice or presumption. For the first time, however, this book examines in depth little used manuscript sources to reconstruct Cranmer's theological development on the crucial Protestant doctrine of justification. The author explores Cranmer's cultural heritage, why he would have been attracted to Luther's thought, and then provides convincing evidence for the Reformed Protestant Augustinianism that Cranmer enshrined in the formularies of the Church of England. For Cranmer the glory of God was his love for the unworthy; the heart of theology was proclaiming this truth through word and sacrament. Hence, the focus of both was on the life of on-going repentance, remembering God's gracious love inspired grateful human love.

This book is the first comprehensive description of some of the many kinds of Protestantism that competed for the souls of Cromwellian Ireland. Its principal purpose is to document the period's most important theological debates, arguing that they were both a cause and consequence of protestant experiences in that turbulent period and that they illustrate surprising contests between and within several English, Scottish, and Irish varieties of protestant identity. Cromwellian protestants were sometimes less puritan, and often much less united by religious convictions, than has often been supposed. Even their resolute opposition to Roman Catholicism has, at times, been exaggerated. The military campaign and its aftermath have been associated with eschatological stringency and anti‐Catholic rhetoric, but this rhetoric is largely absent from the treatises that survived the 1650s. In fact, where Antichrist does appear, it is almost always within the community of the godly. His presence marks the constantly shifting boundaries of projected systems of truth. These shifting boundaries reflect a sustained introspection that allows historians to trace the evolution of religious identities throughout this period. That introspection provides a key to our understanding of the period's events, for the Cromwellian regime had an evidently religious base, and its exponents worked self‐consciously for a second reformation. Nevertheless, the state failed to endorse an ecclesiastical ideal, and that failure made sectarian disagreements inevitable. This book documents the tenor and impact of these debates.

Despite innumerable studies from at least the time of the Reformation, it was not until little more than a century ago that one hypothesis concerning the origin of the Pentateuch, the so-called ‘Documentary Theory’ formulated by Julius Wellhausen, established itself as the point of departure for all subsequent study of this topic. This has remained so until recently, but during the past twenty-five years the study of the Pentateuch has been once more in turmoil, and new theories have proliferated. This book arises from the conviction that much in current Pentateuchal research needs to be subjected to rigorous scrutiny and that much, indeed, is radically mistaken. The author argues that the work of Wellhausen, for all that it needs revision and development in detail, remains the securest basis for understanding the Pentateuch. The book is not a mere call to go ‘back to Wellhausen’, however, for the author also shows that much in the intervening debate has significantly modified his conclusions, as well as asking questions that were not on Wellhausen's agenda. But the Documentary Hypothesis should remain our primary point of reference, and it alone provides the most dependable perspective from which to approach this most difficult of areas in the study of the Old Testament.

Reforming Saints explains how and why Renaissance humanists composed Latin hagiography in Germany in the decades leading up to the Reformation. Reforming Saints shows that, contrary to scholarly presumptions, there was a resurgence in the composition of saints’ lives in the half centuries on either side of 1500 and that German humanists were among the most active authors and editors of these texts. A goal of Reforming Saints is therefore to shed light on the intersection of a kind of writer (the humanist) and a kind of literature (hagiography) at a defining moment for both. Reforming Saints argues for evaluating this abundant, if overlooked and misunderstood literature on its own terms and against an approach that would denigrate it for not meeting standards drawn from Erasmus or Luther. By exploring salient themes in the humanists’ hagiographical writings and relating them to the general religious culture of the era, Reforming Saints discovers the unexpected yet coherent extent of humanist engagement in the cult of the saints and exposes the strategic ways that these authors made writings about the saints into a literature for religious and cultural reforms that German humanists promoted through much else of their activity. Writing saints’ lives provided these Renaissance scholars a way to investigate Germany's medieval past, to reconstruct and exalt its greatness, and to advocate programs of religious and cultural reform. Reforming Saints proposes that these German humanists thus showed themselves to be much like their Italian contemporaries, many of whom were engaged in similar projects. Moreover, these compositions provided later authors, polemicists, and philologists in Catholic Europe – from Counter‐Reformation preachers in Switzerland to seventeenth‐century Bollandists in Brussels – a legacy to draw from and use for different purposes by the end of the sixteenth century.