Drawing on an extensive collection of Catholic, Lutheran, and Calvinist sermon collections (postils), this book offers the first comprehensive, systematic presentation of standard preaching texts in early modern Germany including their creation, print production, use, and censorship.

Jacob Panhausen stands as a major but little-studied figure in the renewal of the Premonstratensian Order during the crucial decades of the sixteenth century when the very survival of religious life hung in the balance. His career (1540–1582) as abbot of Steinfeld in Germany spanned the whole era of the Council of Trent and its aftermath, and he died the same year that Saint Norbert was officially canonized. This volume presents the first English translation of two Latin texts by Jacob Panhausen, A Loving Exhortation to Prelates and Those in Their Charge and Treatise on Monastic Life and Religious Vows. The introduction offers a biographical and analytical overview of this outstanding Norbertine reformer, illuminating a crucial time in the renewal of the Premonstratensian Order during and after the Council of Trent. Intended as they were for his confreres at Steinfeld and other abbeys, they show his zeal for reform, his dedication to the monastic tradition, and his humanistic and exegetical concerns.

Buying and Selling explores the many facets of the business of books across and beyond Europe, adopting the viewpoints of printers, publishers, booksellers, and readers. Essays by twenty-five scholars from a range of disciplines seek to reconstruct the dynamics of the trade through a variety of sources. Through the combined investigation of printed output, documentary evidence, provenance research, and epistolary networks, this volume trails the evolving relationship between readers and the book trade. In the resulting picture of failure and success, balanced precariously between debt-economies, sale strategies and uncertain profit, customers stand out as the real winners.

In this commentary on 2 Corinthians, Scott Manetsch guides readers through both familiar voices and lesser-known figures of the early modern period from a diversity of theological traditions, including Lutherans, Reformed, Radicals, Anglicans, and Roman Catholics. This volume will open the Reformation's resources to preachers, scholars, and all who would be newly created in Christ.

This work challenges the common consensus that Luther, with his commitment to St. Paul's articulation of justification by faith, leaves no room for the Letter of St. James. Against this one-sided reading of Luther, focused only his criticism of the letter, this book argues that Luther had fruitful interpretations of the epistle that shaped the subsequent exegetical tradition. Scholarship's singular concentration on Luther's criticism of James as "an epistle of straw" has caused many to overlook Luther's sermons on James, the many places where James comes to full expression in Luther's writings, and the influence that Luther's biblical interpretation had on later interpretations of James. Based primarily on neglected Lutheran sermons in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, this work examines the pastoral hermeneutic of Luther and his theological heirs as they heard the voice of James and communicated that voice to and for the sake of the church. Scholars, pastors, and educated laity alike are invited to discover how Luther's theology was shaped by the Epistle of James and how Luther's students and theological heirs aimed to preach this disputed letter fruitfully to their hearers.

Christianization and Commonwealth in Early Medieval Europe re-examines the alterations in Western European life that followed widespread conversion to Christianity-the phenomena traditionally termed "Christianization". It refocuses scholarly paradigms for Christianization around the development of mandatory rituals. One prominent ritual, Rogationtide supplies an ideal case study demonstrating a new paradigm of "Christianization without religion." Christianization in the Middle Ages was not a slow process through which a Christian system of religious beliefs and practices replaced an earlier pagan system. In the Middle Ages, religion did not exist in the sense of a fixed system of belief bounded off from other spheres of life. Rather, Christianization was primarily ritual performance. Being a Christian meant joining a local church community. After the fall of Rome, mandatory rituals such as Rogationtide arose to separate a Christian commonwealth from the pagans, heretics, and Jews outside it. A Latin West between the polis and the parish had its own institution-the Rogation procession-for organizing local communities. For medieval people, sectarian borders were often flexible and rituals served to demarcate these borders. Rogationtide is an ideal case study of this demarcation, because it was an emotionally powerful feast, which combined pageantry with doctrinal instruction, community formation, social ranking, devotional exercises, and bodily mortification. As a result, rival groups quarrelled over the holiday's meaning and procedure, sometimes violently, in order to reshape the local order and ban people and practices as non-Christian.

Protestant reformers sought to effect a radical change in the way their contemporaries understood and coped with the suffering of body and soul that were so prominent in the early modern period. The reformers did so because they believed that many traditional approaches to suffering were not sufficiently Christian--that is, they thought these approaches were unbiblical. The Reformation of Suffering examines the Protestant reformation of suffering and shows how it was a central part of the larger Protestant effort to reform church and society. Despite its importance, no other text has directly examined this reformation of suffering. This book investigates the history of Christian reflection on suffering and consolation in the Latin West and places the Protestant reformation campaign within this larger context, paying close attention to important continuities and discontinuities between Catholic and Protestant traditions. Focusing especially on Wittenberg Christianity, The Reformation of Suffering examines the genesis of Protestant doctrines of suffering among the leading reformers and then traces the transmission of these doctrines from the reformers to the common clergy. It also examines the reception of these ideas by lay people. The text underscores the importance of consolation in early modern Protestantism and seeks to challenge a scholarly trend that has emphasized the themes of discipline and control in Wittenberg Christianity. It shows how Protestant clergymen and burghers could be remarkably creative and resourceful as they sought to convey solace to one another in the midst of suffering and misfortune. The Protestant reformation of suffering had a profound impact on church and society in the early modern period and contributed significantly to the shape of the modern world.