The history of belief, piety, and theology ("Frommigkeitsgeschichte") has long stood in the center of Erlangen church historian Berndt Hamm's research interest. Inspired by his work, scholars from Europe and the U.S. have produced this interdisciplinary volume covering topics from the early Middle Ages to the present and dedicate it to him on his sixtieth birthday. Theologie- und frommigkeitsgeschichtlichen Phanomenen gilt das besondere Forschungsinteresse des Erlanger Kirchenhistorikers Berndt Hamm. Die Impulse aus seinen Forschungen aufnehmend, widmen ihm Forscher/-innen aus Europa und den USA zum 60. Geburtstag diesen interdisziplinar angelegten Sammelband mit Beitragen vom Fruhmittelalter bis zur Gegenwart.

Homer in Wittenberg draws on manuscript and printed materials to demonstrate Homer's foundational significance for educational and theological reform during the Reformation in Wittenberg. In the first study of Melanchthon's Homer annotations from three different periods spanning his career, and the first book-length study of his reading of a classical author, William Weaver offers a new perspective on the liberal arts and textual authority in the Renaissance and Reformation. Melanchthon's significance in the teaching of the liberal arts has long been recognized, but Homer's prominent place in his educational reforms is not widely known. Homer was instrumental in Melanchthon's attempt to transform the university curriculum, and his reforms of the liberal arts are clarified by his engagements with Homeric speech, a subject of interest in recent Homer scholarship. Beginning with his Greek grammar published just as he arrived in Wittenberg in 1518, and proceeding through his 1547 work on dialectic, Homer in Wittenberg shows that teaching Homer decisively shaped Melanchthon's redesign of grammar, logic, and rhetoric. Melanchthon embarked on reforming the liberal arts with the ultimate objective of reforming theological education. His teaching of Homer illustrates the philosophical principles behind his use of well-known theological terms including sola scriptura, law and gospel, and loci communes. Homer's significance extended even to a practical theology of prayer, and Wittenberg scholia on Homer from the 1550s illustrate how the Homeric poem could be used to exercise faith as well as literary judgment and eloquence.