The Protestant Reformation was hardly a unified protest against the doctrines and practices of the Medieval church. Aside from the mainstream Lutheran, Anglican, and Reformed divisions, a variety of eddies and side currents also flowed through reform in the sixteenth century. There were Anabaptists, of course, as well as Spiritualists, Mystics, Pantheists, Anti-Trinitarians, and others in the so-called Radical Reformation. One of the most intriguing of these smaller, too-marginalized movements were the Schwenkfelders, named for the Silesian lay theologian, Casper Schwenckfeld von Ossig (1489-1561). An irenic voice in the raucous controversies of the sixteenth century, Schwenckfeld pioneered a Reformation of the Middle Way that sought to avoid the extremes of the day. He started as an admirer of Luther, but developed a more spiritual interpretation of Christ's presence in the Sacrament. Venturing further along this vector, he emphasized the spiritual dimension in all ecclesiastical externals, including preaching, the ministry, baptism, and church. Themes involving Christology and Soteriology, however, fill all 19 volumes of the Schwenckfeld's writings - the 'Corpus Schwenckfeldianorum - and form the very center of Schwenckfeldian theology, still espoused by the Schwenkfelders of eastern Pennsylvania. In brilliant fashion, this study illumines that core.

During the sixteenth-century reformations, Caspar Schwenckfeld was one of the mavericks and creative thinkers who made up the amorphous grouping of radicals. At the time, and since, much has been made of the number of women who were attracted to his theology. Various reasons for this have been suggested, ranging from the attractions of a well spoken nobleman through to the pull of a more domestic religion. This study argues that the attraction lay in the theology that Schwenckfeld explored and offered, and the ways in which it destabilized the accepted social and biological definitions of gender identity.

This handbook of Anabaptism and Spiritualism provides an informative survey of recent scholarship on the Radical Reformation, from the 1520s to the end of the eighteenth century. Each chapter offers a narrative summary that engages current research and suggests directions for future study.

The first book-length analysis of the thought of the first English Baptist

This fast-paced survey of Western civilization’s transition from the Middle Ages to modernity brings that tumultuous period vividly to life. Carlos Eire, popular professor and gifted writer, chronicles the two-hundred-year era of the Renaissance and Reformation with particular attention to issues that persist as concerns in the present day. Eire connects the Protestant and Catholic Reformations in new and profound ways, and he demonstrates convincingly that this crucial turning point in history not only affected people long gone, but continues to shape our world and define who we are today. The book focuses on the vast changes that took place in Western civilization between 1450 and 1650, from Gutenberg’s printing press and the subsequent revolution in the spread of ideas to the close of the Thirty Years’ War. Eire devotes equal attention to the various Protestant traditions and churches as well as to Catholicism, skepticism, and secularism, and he takes into account the expansion of European culture and religion into other lands, particularly the Americas and Asia. He also underscores how changes in religion transformed the Western secular world. A book created with students and nonspecialists in mind, Reformations is an inspiring, provocative volume for any reader who is curious about the role of ideas and beliefs in history.

A distinguished scholar places the Reformation movement in its medieval context. Oberman's discerning perspective illuminates the modern student in regard to the multi-faceted historical-cultural context out of which the Reformation arose. "This splendid volume includes essays ranging in time from the fourteenth century to Calvin. . . ".--Gordon Rupp, University of Cambridge.

This study offers a radical reinterpretation of the sixteenth-century Christological debates between Lutheran and Reformed theologians on the ascription of divine and human predicates to the person of the incarnate Son of God (the communicatio idiomatum). It does so by close attention to the arguments deployed by the protagonists in the discussion, and to the theologians' metaphysical and semantic assumptions, explicit and implicit. It traces the central contours of the Christological debates, from the discussion between Luther and Zwingli in the 1520s to the Colloquy of Montbéliard in 1586. Richard Cross shows that Luther's Christology is thoroughly Medieval, and that innovations usually associated with Luther-in particular, that Christ's human nature comes to share in divine attributes-should be ascribed instead to his younger contemporary Johannes Brenz. The discussion is highly sensitive to the differences between the various Luther groups-followers of Brenz, and the different factions aligned in varying ways with Melanchthon-and to the differences between all of these and the Reformed theologians. By locating the Christological discussions in their immediate Medieval background, Cross also provides a comprehensive account of the continuities and discontinuities between the two eras. In these ways, it is shown that the standard interpretations of the Reformation debates on the matter are almost wholly mistaken.