Die Reformationsgeschichte der Stadt Bremen unterscheidet sich von vielen anderen Reformationen im Alten Reich, ist aber, auch in der intensiven Forschung während der Reformationsdekade, kaum einmal berücksichtigt worden. Sie ist deutlich "anders" als die Reformation in den "Kernlanden" und in den Städten. In der ersten, lutherischen Phase ist manches vergleichbar: die grundstürzenden Ideen, die ihre Legitimation aus Gottes Wort ziehen, kodifiziert in der Heiligen Schrift, Antiklerikalismus, Provokation, Gewalt und Beschwichtigung. Ab der Jahrhundertmitte gibt es aber ein Vorwärtsdrängen zu einer entschiedeneren zweiten Phase. Ziel des Bandes ist es, Bremen in der Reformationsgeschichtsforschung das verdiente Gewicht zu geben. Mit Beiträgen von Christoph Auffarth, Erik A. de Boer, Robert J. Christman, Gerald Dörner, Konrad Elmshäuser, Johannes Göhler, Monika Göhler, Andrea Hauser, Fred van Lieburg, Jan van de Kamp, Frank van der Pol, Pieter L. Rouwendal, Leo van Santen, Ruth Schilling, Stavros Vlachos, Manfred B. Wischnewsky und Regine Wolters. [The "other" Reformation in the Old Empire. Bremen and North-West Europe] The history of the Reformation in the city of Bremen differs from many other Reformation processes in the Old Empire. Yet it has hardly been addressed, not even in the decade of lively commemoration of the Reformation. Bremen's was a "different" Reformation in comparison with similar developments in the "core territories" of the Reformation, as well as in the cities. In the first, Lutheran, phase of Bremen's Reformation, many aspects were similar to those elsewhere: the groundbreaking ideas, which were legitimated by reference to the Word of God, as codified in Holy Scripture; anticlericalism; provocative stances; violence and appeasement. From about 1550 onwards, however, Bremen's Reformation proceeded towards a more uncompromising second phase. The aim of this volume is to give Bremen its due within the field of Reformation research.

For many years, scholars struggled to write the history of the constitution and political structure of the Holy Roman Empire. This book argues that this was because the political and social order could not be understood without considering the rituals and symbols that held the Empire together. What determined the rules (and whether they were followed) depended on complex symbolic-ritual actions. By examining key moments in the political history of the Empire, the author shows that it was a vocabulary of symbols, not the actual written laws, that formed a political language indispensable in maintaining the common order.

Although state transformation – continuous struggle and bargaining between rulers and their subjects, producing an unpredictable variety of political structures – is often overlooked, the process is crucial in assessing the organizational development of early modern composite monarchies and deserves further investigation. In Austria, the monarchy’s emergence as a great power required it to overcome several successive crises that culminated in the decades around 1700. The Habsburgs succeeded more by adjusting relations between Crown and lordships than through institution building. This unusual interaction of state and non-state actors resulted in an Austria that markedly deviated from the centralizing nation-state exemplified by Britain or France. The nascent Habsburg fiscal-financial-military regime transformed regional and local authority, leading to armed conflict and causing disintegration of the administrative and social fabric. From the mid-seventeenth century onward, power – whether local or central, or social or political – would undergo enormous changes. Grounded in extensive research into Czech archives and spanning an era from the Thirty Years’ War to the coronation of Charles VI, Lordship and State Transformation delves into the complex transitions that characterized the first instance of a balance of power in Europe, with a focus on its underresearched great power, the Habsburg monarchy.

In The Reformation of Historical Thought, Mark Lotito re-examines the development of Western historiography by concentrating on Philipp Melanchthon (1497–1560) and his universal history, Carion’s Chronicle (1532). With the Chronicle, Melanchthon overturned the medieval papal view of history, and he offered a distinctly Wittenberg perspective on the foundations of the “modern” European world. Through its immense popularity, the Chronicle assumed extraordinary significance across the divides of language, geography and confession. Indeed, Melanchthon’s intervention would become the point of departure for theologians, historians and jurists to debate the past, present and future of the Holy Roman Empire. Through the Chronicle, the Wittenberg reformation of historical thought became an integral aspect of European intellectual culture for the centuries that followed.

"This book contains twenty essays by expert scholars of higher learning in the early modern period. Together they discuss topics that historians of universities have largely ignored: notably the extensive collaboration, and occasional conflicts, between university scholars, instructors, and administrators on the one hand, and students at academies, independent and dependent colleges, gymnasia, and Latin schools on the other. The contributions also cover a wide geographical range, covering universities, schools, academies, and the history of the book, in many European states, and Latin America"--

Translating Early Modern Science explores the essential role translators played in a time when the scientific community used Latin and vernacular European languages side-by-side. This interdisciplinary volume illustrates how translators were mediators, agents, and interpreters of scientific knowledge.