{"title":"Reforming the Holy Name: The Afterlife of the IHS in Early Modern England","authors":"D. Davis","doi":"10.1515/jemc-2021-2015","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1515/jemc-2021-2015","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract This article challenges the prevailing understanding of the Holy Name of Jesus as largely a Roman Catholic representation in early modern England. Although the Holy Name was attacked intermittently by Protestant iconoclasts, the article uses both visual and literary texts to set out a more nuanced relationship between the symbol and the broader religious culture of the period. As a symbol, the IHS served as a polysemous representation in a period of religious turmoil, creating not only multiple meanings but also multiple contexts in which the symbol could be found. The article both addresses the reasons why scholars tend to see the IHS as a particularly Catholic symbol and demonstrates the continued importance of the Holy Name in Protestant devotion.","PeriodicalId":29688,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Early Modern Christianity","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.1,"publicationDate":"2021-11-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"89781351","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Von Rossen und Wagen: Das Verhältnis von Stadt und Land in der Ulmer Reformation","authors":"S. Schenk","doi":"10.1515/jemc-2021-2010","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1515/jemc-2021-2010","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract This essay addresses the question of how the city and its territory (Umland) were related in the reformation process. Its object of investigation is the imperial city of Ulm which owned one of the largest territories. The assumption that in the reformation process the city was the outrider and the territory followed proves adequate only at first view. A closer look shows some more complex dynamics. Whereas reformation preaching indeed did spread from the city into the territory, the practice of a reformed eucharist started at the edges of the territory. After the official introduction of the reformation in 1531 the territory played an important role concerning reformatory diversity. It served the city as religious experiment space and storage room.","PeriodicalId":29688,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Early Modern Christianity","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.1,"publicationDate":"2021-11-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"79005816","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Conciliar Infallibility and Error in the Thomistic Ecclesiology of St. Robert Bellarmine, S.J.","authors":"Christian D. Washburn","doi":"10.1515/jemc-2021-2014","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1515/jemc-2021-2014","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract In the sixteenth century, St. Robert Bellarmine (1542–1621) in his Disputationes de controversiis Christianae fidei adversus huius temporis haereticos defended the authority of the conciliar magisterium. Bellarmine, like other sixteenth-century Thomists, held that there were conditions under which God necessarily protects a general council from teaching error, but he did not deny that councils can and have erred. This article explains Bellarmine’s classification of the different types of councils. It also examines the conditions under which he believes that God necessarily protects a council from teaching error. It then discusses Bellarmine’s teaching on what kinds of councils can err and under what conditions a council can do so. Finally, the article will discuss his historical examination of various alleged conciliar errors.","PeriodicalId":29688,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Early Modern Christianity","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.1,"publicationDate":"2021-11-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"83060686","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Sebastian Münster and his Sources: The Messiah in Rome and the Convergence of Christian-Jewish Polemic and Intra-Christian Conflict","authors":"Danny Lehmann","doi":"10.1515/jemc-2021-2009","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1515/jemc-2021-2009","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract The Talmudic story of an encounter between Rabbi Joshua ben Levi and the Messiah at the gate of Rome served medieval Christians well in their polemics against the Jews. This was, it seemed, a Jewish affirmation of the truth of Christianity: not only did the legend indicate that the Messiah had already come, it also placed him in Rome, the epicenter of the Christian faith. For that very reason, however, later Protestant polemicists could hardly be expected to utilize the story correspondingly, not after rejecting the primacy of Rome. This article considers a number of Protestant responses to the Jewish Messiah in Rome tradition. Its primary focus, though, is on two anti-Jewish treatises by Sebastian Münster. As Stephen G. Burnett has demonstrated, Münster’s texts draw heavily from pre-Reformation polemical works – in other words, works that accepted Rome’s preeminence; the present article argues that Münster managed to subtly convey his own Protestant sensitivities in discussing the Joshua b. Levi story, all the same. This close reading of Münster offers a unique perspective on the convergence of Christian-Jewish controversy and Protestant-Catholic tensions, and especially on the role and development of the former in light of the latter.","PeriodicalId":29688,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Early Modern Christianity","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.1,"publicationDate":"2021-11-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"76255118","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Maintaining the Common Peace: Security and the Religious Peace of 1578 during the Dutch Revolt","authors":"E. Swart","doi":"10.1515/jemc-2021-2013","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1515/jemc-2021-2013","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract This article analyses the failed Dutch Religious Peace of 1578 through the lens of security. As Wayne te Brake recently argued in Religious War and Religious Peace in Early Modern Europe, creating security for all parties is key for an effective religious peace. In the sixteenth century, communal security was deemed a collective responsibility. In practice this meant that religious peace – suppressing and preventing violence and threats between Protestants and Catholics – was framed as a matter of preserving the common peace. Theological questions were dissimulated or kept out of peace settlements. In 1578, the religious peace proposed that Catholics and Calvinists were to live in the Netherlands side by side, each allowed to worship publicly. Some 27 Dutch towns introduced this religious peace. Yet the municipal magistrates mostly did so reluctantly and generally declined to share political power, thus contributing to its failure. Moreover, there were different, conflicting conceptions at work concerning the common peace, as well as regarding how to keep it.","PeriodicalId":29688,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Early Modern Christianity","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.1,"publicationDate":"2021-11-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"79920500","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Teaching Romans 7 after Trent: Michael Baius and his Lecture Hall on Concupiscence and Original Sin in Early Modern Louvain (1552–1589)","authors":"Jarrik Van Der Biest","doi":"10.1515/jemc-2021-2012","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1515/jemc-2021-2012","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract This article introduces a new corpus of sources relevant to the sixteenth-century Baianist controversy at the University of Louvain: student notes made during Michael Baius’ lectures on the Bible during the 1560s. The commentary on Romans 7 taught by the Royal Professor of Sacred Scripture contains a discussion on the sinfulness of concupiscence, the effect of the Fall driving humankind to sin. A contested concept between Catholics and Protestants, the nature of concupiscentia also lies at the core of debates on the orthodoxy of Baius’ justification theology, both early modern and more recent. The professor’s lecture on Romans 7 is analysed against his published treatises, the censures (1565–1567) and papal bull (1567) condemning certain propositions as heretical, and the Tridentine Decree on Original Sin (1546). While Baius’ Augustinian revaluation of humanity’s wounded nature (natura viciata) moved away from the Thomistic conception of concupiscence as innate, but disordered, he did respect the boundaries set by the Council of Trent. Indeed, Baius taught his positive theology in the interstices between the educational application of the Tridentine Decrees and the gradual assertion of dominance by a renewed Thomism in Catholic orthodoxy. I argue that such a historical reading of Baius’ ideas is the key to avoid the earlier dogmatic assessments of his theology.","PeriodicalId":29688,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Early Modern Christianity","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.1,"publicationDate":"2021-11-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"87744837","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Philipp Melanchthons Beziehungen zu Ungarn und Siebenbürgen im Spiegel von Netzwerken und Korrespondenzen","authors":"Christine Mundhenk","doi":"10.1515/jemc-2021-2007","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1515/jemc-2021-2007","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract For decades, Melanchthon maintained intensive relationships with Hungary. Students from there formed the largest group of foreign students at Wittenberg University. Melanchthon supported them during their studies and kept in touch with some of them after they returned to their home country. Networks were necessary, so that letters and messages reached their recipients. By writing letters of recommendation to others, Melanchthon enabled his students to establish contacts and to build up their own network. At the Coetus Hungaricus existing at Wittenberg University the Hungarian students also made contacts, which were useful to them later. Edited correspondences allow to track down and describe such interlinking. A network of contacts in Hungary can be depicted between Johannes Honterus, Valentin Wagner, Georg Werner, Sigismund Tordai-Gelous, Mátyás Dévai Bíró and Gáspár Heltai. The relations between them as well as the close contact with Melanchthon provided mutual assurance and helped to control the doctrine adopted from Wittenberg.","PeriodicalId":29688,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Early Modern Christianity","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.1,"publicationDate":"2021-04-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"84209640","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Die reformatorischen Bekenntnisse in Ungarn und Siebenbürgen (1545–1572)","authors":"Zoltán Csepregi","doi":"10.1515/jemc-2021-2004","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1515/jemc-2021-2004","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract Originally, the local confessions served to account for the religious and secular authorities in matters of religion. They also formed a written basis for the legal unification of the affected communities, later they ensured the unity of the pastors in teaching, and finally they offered the community the legal basis for demanding new rights (the primacy or solitude of the denomination) based on old privileges. Over time, other functions were added to the original function of the confessions, so that a complex process of reception emerged. There was a general conception of ‘Catholicity’ that was claimed by the creeds insofar as they referred to the tradition of the Christian church. The interdependence with the theological development in Germany is evident not least from the fact that literary models such as the Confessio Augustana were used to write these texts.","PeriodicalId":29688,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Early Modern Christianity","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.1,"publicationDate":"2021-04-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"77032896","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Die Entstehung des Reformatorenbildes: Luther und Honterus im Vergleich","authors":"V. Leppin","doi":"10.1515/jemc-2021-2002","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1515/jemc-2021-2002","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract Due to the rather different source situation, comparing the formation of a Reformer’s image in the cases of Luther and Honterus is not an easy task. For Luther, the article therefore concentrates on the early historiography of his environment. In doing so, it becomes apparent that his role more and more was described as an active one. With this, the understanding of Reformation as liberation came to the fore. Hence, salvation-historical categories predominated. In contrast, the interpretation of Reformation as an educational event was in the foreground in Honterus, for whom above all some utterings of Schesaeus could be drawn upon. Despite this clear orientation towards the humanistic ideal, Luther still remained emphasized as spurring the entire movement. While Luther was seen as marking the shift in salvation history from the time of the Antichrist to the Gospel, Honter focused on the transition from a disordered society to one structured by education.","PeriodicalId":29688,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Early Modern Christianity","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.1,"publicationDate":"2021-04-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"78455001","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Von Wittenberg und Nürnberg nach Kronstadt: Die Siebenbürgischen Kirchenordnungen von 1543/47 vor dem Hintergrund ihrer Wurzeln","authors":"Armin Kohnle","doi":"10.1515/jemc-2021-2003","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1515/jemc-2021-2003","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract In the early phase of the Reformation in Transylvania, two church-regulating texts became particularly important: Johannes Honter’s little Reformation booklet for Kronstadt und Burzenland from 1543 and the church regulations published in print in 1547, which the Universitas Saxonum made binding for the entire area of Saxon law three years later. The essay focuses on these two important texts and analyzes their roots in the Reformation tradition of the Holy Roman Empire and the Swiss Confederation. Wittenberg and Nuremberg stand for two of the possible sources from which the Transylvanian church ordinances could have drawn. In view of more than a century of intensive historiographical debate on these questions, an attempt is made to present the different positions and to check them for plausibility. The influence of Swiss theology, which is important from a church historical perspective, is also analyzed here.","PeriodicalId":29688,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Early Modern Christianity","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.1,"publicationDate":"2021-04-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"83137507","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}