Except perhaps for Wittenberg, no place in the German Empire played a greater role in the early Reformation than the free imperial city of Strasbourg. This volume presents the results of a workshop on the correspondence of a major figure in the Strasbourg Reformation, Wolfgang Capito. The collection includes interpretive essays, text editions of two Capito works and documents of a lawsuit that affected his establishment in the city, as well as studies of the problems of producing modern editions of Capito himself and his contemporaries Erasmus, Bucer, Bullinger, and Beza. Readers will find fresh insights into the intellectual, religious, and political world of southwestern Germany in the early sixteenth century.

In their acclaimed, much-used Church History, James Bradley and Richard Muller lay out guidelines, methods, and basic reference tools for research and writing in the fields of church history and historical theology. Over the years, this book has helped countless students define their topics, locate relevant source materials, and write quality papers. This revised, expanded, and updated second edition includes discussion of Internet-based research, digitized texts, and the electronic forms of research tools. The greatly enlarged bibliography of study aids now includes many significant new resources that have become available since the first edition’s publication in 1995. Accessible and clear, this introduction will continue to benefit both students and experienced scholars in the field.

In Charles Areskine’s Library, Karen Baston uses a detailed study of an eighteenth-century Scottish advocate’s private book collection to explore key themes in the Scottish Enlightenment including secularisation, modernisation, internationalisation, and the development of legal literature in Scotland. By exploring a surviving manuscript dated 1731that lists a Scottish lawyer’s library, Karen Baston demonstrates that the books Charles Areskine owned, used in practice, and read for pleasure embedded him in the intellectual culture that expanded in early eighteenth-century Scotland. Areskine and his fellow advocates emerged as scholarly and sociable gentlemen who led their nation. Lawyers were integral to and integrated with the Scottish society that allowed the Scottish Enlightenment to take root and flourish within Areskine’s lifetime.

The Routledge Handbook of the English Writing System provides a comprehensive account of the English writing system, both in its current iteration and highlighting the developing trends that will influence its future. Twenty-nine chapters written by specialists from around the world cover core linguistic and psychological aspects, and also include areas from other disciplines such as typography and computer-mediated communication. Divided into five parts, the volume encompasses a wide range of approaches and addresses issues in the following areas: theory and the English writing system, discussing the effects of etymology and phonology; the history of the English writing system from its earliest development, including spelling, pronunciation and typography; the acquisition and teaching of writing, with discussions of literacy issues and dyslexia; English writing in use around the world, both in the UK and America, and also across Europe and Japan; computer-mediated communication and developments in writing online and on social media. The Routledge Handbook of the English Writing System is essential reading for researchers and postgraduate students working in this area.

The Middle English Book analyzes 202 literary manuscripts from late medieval England (1350-1500) and argues that most readers looked to scribes in their immediate vicinity to acquire copies of literature. It examines various forms of writing practiced by scribes throughout the late medieval English countryside and shows that the production of documents underscored the wide availability of literary copying. As a result, when a reader acquired a manuscript,they were most often tapping into local networks of document production.

In Riches and Reform Bess Rhodes explores the ruinous financial consequences of the Reformation in Scotland’s ecclesiastical capital of St Andrews, tracing how the religious changes of the sixteenth century triggered economic crisis and eventual urban decline.