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"The Jewish Martyrs of Grenoble: Martyrdom and Biography," Susan Einbinder "Cloistering Catherine: Religious Identity in Raymond of Capua's Legenda maior of Catherine of Siena," Thomas Luongo "The... more
"The Jewish Martyrs of Grenoble: Martyrdom and Biography," Susan Einbinder "Cloistering Catherine: Religious Identity in Raymond of Capua's Legenda maior of Catherine of Siena," Thomas Luongo "The Prioress's Tale' in Context: Good and Bad Reports of Non-Christians in Fourteenth-Century England," Henry Ansgar Kelly "Distinguishing Florentines, Defining Italians: The Language Question and Cultural Identities in Sixteenth-Century Florence," Ann Moyer "Historia magistra sanctitatis'? The Relationship between Historiography and Hagiography in Italy after the Council of Trent (ca. 1654-1742)," Simon Ditchfield "Cross-Confessional Features of English Identity: The Ditchley Portrait of Queen Elizabeth I and the High Altarpiece of the English College in Rome," Jason A. Nice "Dutch Ants and Dutch Uncles: Sorting Out Englishness Among the Exile Community in the Low Countries," Andrew Fleck "The Office of the Patriot: The Problems of Passions and of Love of Fatherland in Protestant Thought, Melanchthon to Althusius, 1520s to 1620s," Robert von Friedeburg "Experiencing Unfreedom: Contours of a Peasant Discourse on 'Serfdom' in the Black Forest, 1660-1745," David Martin Luebke.
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... Herve Martin's study of 770 ser-mons preached in northern France from 1350 to 1520 is especially important, as are the contributions of Andre Godwin and Olivia Holloway McIntyre. ... JAMES B. McSWAIN Tuskegee University ...
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Research Interests: Philosophy and Wonder
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Wallfahrten in der europäischen Kultur. Tagungsband Příbram, 26.–29. Mai 2004. Pilgrimage in European culture. Proceedings of the Symposium Příbram, May 26th–29th 2004. Edited by Daniel Doležal and Hartmut Kühne. (Europäische Wallfahrtsstudien, 1.) Pp. 732 incl. 88 ills. Frankfurt-am-Main: Peter ...more
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Predigten der Barockzeit. Texte und Kommentar. Edited by Werner Welzig (with Heinrich Kabas and Roswitha Woytek). (Österreichische Akademie der Wissenschaften, Philosophisch-historische Klasse Sitzungsberichte, 626.) Pp. xv + 839. Vienna: Österreichische Akademie der Wissenschaften, 1995. DM 140....more
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Page 1. In His Image and Likeness POLITICAL ICONOGRAPHY AND RELIGIOUS CHANGE IN REGENSBURG, 1500-1600 Kristin Eldyss Sorensen Zapalac Page 2. Page 3. Page 4. ISBN D-'' " In His Image and... more
Page 1. In His Image and Likeness POLITICAL ICONOGRAPHY AND RELIGIOUS CHANGE IN REGENSBURG, 1500-1600 Kristin Eldyss Sorensen Zapalac Page 2. Page 3. Page 4. ISBN D-'' " In His Image and Likeness Political ...
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Research Interests: Art and Oxford university
Sabbateanism has recently been the subject of renewed interest among social and religious historians. Attention has been focused on the vicissitudes of Sabbatai Zevi himself as well as on the movement that gathered around him in 1665 and... more
Sabbateanism has recently been the subject of renewed interest among social and religious historians. Attention has been focused on the vicissitudes of Sabbatai Zevi himself as well as on the movement that gathered around him in 1665 and 1666, and that would continue to express itself through activist missionizing and subterranean conventicles in the decades and even centuries that followed. Both proponents and opponents of the movement have offered historians opportunities to investigate the..
Research Interests: Christianity, Comparative Religion, History, Early Modern History, History of Religion, and 15 moreHistory of Christianity, Jewish Mysticism, Jewish History, Eschatology and Apocalypticism, History of Religions, Islamic Studies, Intellectual History of the Baroque Period, History of the Jews, Early Modern Italy, Heresy, Jewish Messianism, Italy, Jewish Christian relations, Abraham Rovigo, and Early Modern Mediterranean cultural exchange
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Als im Februar 1708 Nicolas Desmarets (nach anderer Schreibweise Desmaretz) Generalkontrolleur der Finanzen wurde, durchschritt Frankreich nicht zuletzt aufgrund der Kriege eine seiner schwersten Krisen. Im folgenden Jahr verschlimmerte... more
Als im Februar 1708 Nicolas Desmarets (nach anderer Schreibweise Desmaretz) Generalkontrolleur der Finanzen wurde, durchschritt Frankreich nicht zuletzt aufgrund der Kriege eine seiner schwersten Krisen. Im folgenden Jahr verschlimmerte sich die Lage dramatisch durch die Niederlage von Malplaquet und die Hungersnot des Winters 1709/1710. Der Staat war überschuldet, die Truppen im Feld ohne Sold, die Ressourcen, die traditionellen Wege der Finanzbeschaffung waren erschöpft: Unkonventionelle Maßnahmen schienen geboten, wie bereits mit der capitation praktiziert, oder im Fundus der Reformvorschläge und Theorien der Vauban, Boisguilbert und anderer vorgezeichnet. Am Ende des Reflexionsprozesses stand die Einführung des sogenannten »dixième« vom Oktober 1710, einer allgemeinen Steuer auf alle Vermögenseinkünfte. Diese Steuer nahm keine Rücksicht mehr auf die Standeszugehörigkeit der Steuerpflichtigen, sie egalisierte die aisés und stand somit in offenem Widerspruch zur Verfasstheit des a...
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Forum: Sexuality and Culture in Medieval and Renaissance Europe "Bodies, Gender, Health, Disease: Recent Work on Medieval Women's Medicine," Monica Green "The Mathematics of Sex: One to Two, or Two to One?" Helen... more
Forum: Sexuality and Culture in Medieval and Renaissance Europe "Bodies, Gender, Health, Disease: Recent Work on Medieval Women's Medicine," Monica Green "The Mathematics of Sex: One to Two, or Two to One?" Helen King Articles "A Medieval Territory for Touch," Fernando Salmon "Sexuality and the Sexual Organs in Latin Physiognomy, 1200-1500," Joseph Ziegler "Donna con Donna? A 1295 Inquest into Female Sodomy," Carol Lansing "'Lustful Luther': Male Libido in the Writings of the Reformer," Merry E. Wiesner "An Unmarried Mother-to-be in Sixteenth-Century Nuremburg Weighs Her Options," Joel F. Harrington "The Performativity of Gender in Early Modern Spanish Art: The Case of the Lacrating Breast," Charlene Villasenor Black "The Marriages of Women Rulers in Sixteenth-Century Britain: Gender and Cultural Analysis," Ruth M. Warnicke.
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This dissertation contributes to the growing literature on early modern popular religion and pilgrimage. In Bavaria, as in much of Germany, shrines, with their accompanying miracles, flourished and multiplied at the end of the Middle... more
This dissertation contributes to the growing literature on early modern popular religion and pilgrimage. In Bavaria, as in much of Germany, shrines, with their accompanying miracles, flourished and multiplied at the end of the Middle Ages. From the beginning of the Reformation, however, the great age of Bavarian pilgrimage ended. The Reformers attacked pilgrimage for a number of reasons. Shrines drained money and attention away from parish churches; pilgrimages could lead the unsophisticated into a false or idolatrous religion. Throughout the sixteenth century, Protestants also developed their own miracle literature that denounced the wonders and pilgrimages of the medieval and Tridentine Church as demonically-inspired frauds and deceits. This dissertation examines the transformation of Catholic miracle and pilgrimage propaganda as a result of Reformation criticism. In the later Middle Ages Bavarian shrines had printed two types of pamphlets: brief chronicles treating the legend of a shrine's foundation and development and miracle books narrating a number of intercessions reported by pilgrims at the shrine. After 1570, Counter-Reformation apologists published new types of pilgrimage books that combined the older functions of shrine chronicles and miracle books. This new genre narrated a shrine's legendary foundation, the development of its pilgrimage, and a selection of contemporary miracles reported at the shrine. Woven through these books is a polemical, theological and devotional defense of shrines, pilgrimage and the cult of the saints. Writers of pilgrimage books also used powerful and triumphal imagery to defend local shrines. Importantly, they countered those arguments of Protestant writers who attacked traditional miracles as diabolic sorcery. Many Catholic writers answered the Reformers' attacks by advancing the idea of a continual war waged throughout history against the saints and their shrines. This resurgent pilgrimage literature reaffirmed and reflected popular beliefs in the ever-present reality of divine intercession at local holy places.Ph.D.European historyMedieval historyPhilosophy, Religion and TheologyReligious historySocial SciencesUniversity of Michigan, Horace H. Rackham School of Graduate Studieshttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/128186/2/8812994.pd
Research Interests: Ancient History, Art, Propaganda, Pilgrimage, Germany, and 7 moreCatholic, His, Bavaria, Ii, Saints, Popular, and Volumes
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account leaves open the questions of whether these changes in religious practicewere the cause or the effect of broader changes both in theology and religious understandings. As he puts it: “As so often, there are no certain answers to... more
account leaves open the questions of whether these changes in religious practicewere the cause or the effect of broader changes both in theology and religious understandings. As he puts it: “As so often, there are no certain answers to these questions” (197). Großbölting devotes the last third of his book to the present. Does religion still have a role to play in contemporary German society? He ultimately rejects the notion, prevalent among conservative pundits, that Islam is rising to fill the vacuum left by the loss of meaning in Christian beliefs and institutions. Although it is true that the number of Muslims in Germany has soared because of immigration, Islam has not achieved a cultural ascendancy in Germany, even if Muslims on the whole remain far more religiously active than Christians (244–45). Großbölting ultimately concludes that Christianity itself is not dead; rather, its specific social and cultural forms from the last 150 years have “come to an end” (293). The culprit was an ethos of “self-determination, self-affirmation and self-realization,” in which the individual came to act as his own yardstick and turned the search for meaning inward (296). Christian values, as important as they have been, thus have become but one set of values among many. The German case, Großbölting nonetheless hints, might be an aberration. “The loss of heaven is not self-evidence, let alone ‘natural’” (292). In the United States “and many other parts of the world religions are on the advance” (292). Recent studies, however, like those carried out by the Pew Foundation, paint a different picture—one of American religious decline, particularly among millennials, and one that reflects the United States’ deepening political divisions. All in all, Losing Heaven is a highly successful account of modern and contemporary religious developments, even if some details, particularly those pertaining to the first decades of this century, will no doubt need to be revised as ongoing events lead us to reassess the immediate past. Because most church archives are governed by a “forty-year rule,” documents from the 1970s and 1980s will become available to scholars in coming years, invariably leading to slight alterations in the picture painted here. The fact that this book has been widely reviewed in Germany’s secular press and has now been made available in English translation speaks to its persuasive power. This wonderfully reflective work serves as a mirror of our present religious moment.
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Constantia et Fortitudo. Der Kult des kapuzinischen Blutzeugen Fidelis von Sigmaringen zwischen 'Pietas Austriaca' und 'Ecclesia Triumphans': Die Verehrungsgeschichte des Protomärtyrers der Gegenreformation, des Kapuzinerordens und der 'Congregatio de propaganda fide' (1622–1729) by Matthias Emil...more
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<p>As the Reformation matured in its second and third generation, it faced new challenges both from within its ranks and from without. In the wake of the conclusion of the Council of Trent, the renewal of spirit within the Catholic... more
<p>As the Reformation matured in its second and third generation, it faced new challenges both from within its ranks and from without. In the wake of the conclusion of the Council of Trent, the renewal of spirit within the Catholic Church challenged Protestant churches throughout Northern Europe, while internally Protestantism came to be riven by doctrinal fault lines between Calvinists, Lutherans, and Anglicans. In response to growing competition between religions, many states moved to enforce doctrinal uniformity, even as a wave of moral disciplining became evident in places throughout Northern Europe. At the same time the increasingly heterodox religious scene helped to produce distinct doctrinal, liturgical, and devotional differences among the various post-Reformation religions, producing confessional identities that were to shape Europe into modern times.</p>
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Historians have long noted an upswell in early-modern Germany in portents, signs worked in nature that pointed to future ills, and have interpreted this increase as an indicator of rising anxiety and fears, fears that were the result,... more
Historians have long noted an upswell in early-modern Germany in portents, signs worked in nature that pointed to future ills, and have interpreted this increase as an indicator of rising anxiety and fears, fears that were the result, either of a new ‘guilt culture’, or which were conditioned by the generally dismal relationship that sixteenth- and seventeenth-century people had to their environment. This article argues for a new interpretation. It relies on recent studies in the psychology of well-being which have shown that natural disasters and a dismal environment do not condition human beings to long-term fear and anxiety. Instead, the mind's ability to adapt to such trials is evidence of an evolutionary process of ‘hedonic adaptation’. The subsequent investigation draws upon the works of Martin Luther, one sixteenth-century moralist generally judged to be among the bleakest critics of the time, to show that his attitude towards the environment was complex and multifaceted,...
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Philip M. Soergel, University of Maryland, College park, philsoergel@comcast.net
Philip Soergel, Arizona State University, soergel@asu.edu