Betr. u.a. Sebastian Castellio und den Druck bzw. die Rezeption von Werken der Kirchenväter in Basel.

This volume deals with the basic problem of how theologians of all confessions handled ancient, mainly Christian, history in the Reformation era. The author argues that far from being a mere tool of religious controversy, history was used throughout the 16th century to express profound religious and theological convictions and that historians and theologians of different confessions sought to define their religious identity by recourse to a particular historical method. By carefully comparing the types of historical documents produced by Calvinist, Lutheran and Roman Catholic circles, she throws a new light on patristic editions and manuals, the Centuries of Magdeburg, the Ecclesiastical Annals of Caesar Baronius and various collections of New Testament Apocrypha. Much of this material is examined here for the first time. The book substantially revises existing preconceptions about Reformation historiography and view of the past.

"In order to examine the exact nature of Beza's influence on the AV we investigated two documents which purport to represent two different stages in the making of the AV; the Bodleian Bishops' MS which deals with the Gospels and the Fulman MS which deals with the Epistles and which appears to represent the work of the Final Revision Committee. . . . "In examining the MS annotations in Bodleian Bishops' our primary concern has been to establish the influence of Beza on these annotations and relate his influence on the Bodleian annotator to his influence on the finished AV. . . . "In examining the Fulman MS . . . we were struck by the comparatively larger number of discrepancies between the Committee's attitude to Beza and the AV's attitude to him." --from the Conclusion

One of the major challenges faced by the emergent Protestant faith was how to establish itself in a hitherto Catholic world. A key way it found to achieve this was to create a common identity through the fashioning of history, emphasising Protestantism's legitimacy and authority. In this study, the life and works of one of the earliest and most influential Protestant historians, Johann Sleidan (1506-1556) are explored to reveal how history could be used to consolidate the new confession and the states which adopted it. Sleidan was commissioned by leading intellectuals from the Schmalkadic League to write the official history of the German Protestant movement, resulting in the publication in 1555 of De statu religionis et reipublicae, Carolo Quinto, Caesare, Commentarii. Overnight his work became the standard account of the early Reformation, referenced by Catholics and Protestants alike in subsequent histories and polemical debates for the next three centuries. Providing the first comprehensive account of Sleidan's life, based almost entirely on primary sources, this book offers a convincing background and context for his writings. It also shows how Sleidan's political role as a diplomat impacted on his work as a historian, and how in turn his monumental work influenced political debate in France and Germany. As a moderate who sought to promote accommodation between the rival confessions, Sleidan provides a fascinating subject of study for modern historians seeking to better understand the complex and multi-faceted nature of the early Reformation.

This collection of twelve new essays explores the role of women and gender in a broad range of ‘radical’ religious movements of the post-Reformation. Organized into three themed divisions, the first examines the activism of female Quakers in their public performances as preachers and petitioners, in their global travels, and in their domestic lives; the second examines early modern prophetesses and their radical revisions of scripture, gender, body, and voice; and the third concerns women who, in diverse ways, crossed boundaries, including the confessional boundaries of Europe. A strength of this volume is its comparative re-examination of the term ‘radical’. German Anabaptists are discussed alongside unorthodox nuns with the aim of understanding how gender factors into innovative and oppositional religion. Contributors include: Sarah Apetrei, Naomi Baker, Sylvia Brown, Ruth Connolly, Pamela Ellis, José Manuel González, Julie Hirst, Stephen A. Kent, Marion Kobelt-Groch, Bo Karen Lee, Kirilka Stavreva, and Sheila Wright.

This volume is a comparative study of the development of the thought of Luther and Melanchthon on the role of secular magistrates in the church that, in contrast to most earlier studies, sees essential agreement between them despite differences of argumentation.

This is the first monograph to examine the complex life of the Reformed Philadelphian court preacher Conrad BrAske (1660-1713). Chapters consider his experiences as a student at Marburg University, as educational traveler, as proponent of a millenarian mindset and his conflicts with Johann Konrad Dippel and the Elberfeld Classis.