scholarly journals The Change in the Understanding of Zwingli in Recent Research

1965 ◽  
Vol 34 (1) ◽  
pp. 3-24
Author(s):  
Gottfried W. Locher
Keyword(s):  
Sixteenth Century ◽  
Critical Edition ◽  
Church History ◽  
The Other ◽  
The Reformation

The editors of Vox Theologica have asked me for a “survey of Zwingli research in the last five to ten years.” However, to understand this subject thematically and methodologically one must go farther back. For the prevailing image of Zwingli today has been formed by three well-known books: 1) Die Kirchenratsauswahl, 1918; 2) Paul Wernle, Zwingli, 1919; 3) Walther Köhler, Huldrych Zwingli, 1943/1954. Walther Köhler (1870–1946), a native of strongly Reformed Wuppertal-Elberfeld, Professor of Church History in Zürich from 1909 to 1929, himself theologically of liberal orientation, was one of the foremost authorities not only on the Reformation as a whole but also on the other movements of the sixteenth century, especially Humanism and Anabaptism. Through countless books, articles and reviews, and through his introductions in the great critical edition of Zwingli's works, he became actually the dean of Zwingli research. Even those who, like this writer, did not know him personally and who differ from him on essential points owe him reverence.

The Reformation of the Sixteenth Century in Renaissance Italy

1981 ◽  
Vol 17 ◽  
pp. 149-166 ◽  
Author(s):  
Philip M. J. McNair
Keyword(s):  
Sixteenth Century ◽  
The Other ◽  
Protestant Reformation ◽  
Modern World ◽  
The Reformation ◽  
Giordano Bruno ◽  
The Subject ◽  
Renaissance Italy ◽  
The One

Between the execution of Gerolamo Savonarola at Florence in May 1498 and the execution of Giordano Bruno at Rome in February 1600, western Christendom was convulsed by the protestant reformation, and the subject of this paper is the effect that that revolution had on the Italy that nourished and martyred those two unique yet representative men: unique in the power and complexity of their personalities, representative because the one sums up the medieval world with all its strengths and weaknesses while the other heralds the questing and questioning modern world in which we live.

Refraining the Reformation

2009 ◽  
Vol 36 (144) ◽  
pp. 598-603 ◽  
Author(s):  
Raymond Gillespie
Keyword(s):  
Seventeenth Century ◽  
Sixteenth Century ◽  
The Other ◽  
Reform Process ◽  
Religious Change ◽  
Deep Roots ◽  
The Reformation

The Reformation in Ireland has never lacked chroniclers, defenders and detractors. The reason for this is not hard to discern. The older literature that grappled with the processes of religious change in sixteenth and seventeenth-century Ireland was based on a number of well-recognised and widely agreed propositions. The first of these was that confessional and political positions were inextricably linked, and the fate of one served not only as a proxy for the other but as an explanation for the trajectory of change; thus, to explain the failure of the reform process to strike deep roots in sixteenth-century Ireland, one had only to invoke the failure of the Tudor conquest.

Medieval Heretics as Protestant Martyrs

1993 ◽  
Vol 30 ◽  
pp. 185-207 ◽  
Author(s):  
Euan Cameron
Keyword(s):  
Sixteenth Century ◽  
Middle Ages ◽  
Martin Luther ◽  
Church History ◽  
Medieval Church ◽  
Church Polity ◽  
The Reformation ◽  
History Of ◽  
Articles Of Faith ◽  
The Church

Two themes which figure repeatedly in the history of the Western Church are the contrasting ones of tradition and renewal. To emphasize tradition, or continuity, is to stress the divine element in the continuous collective teaching and witness of the Church. To call periodically for renewal and reform is to acknowledge that any institution composed of people will, with time, lose its pristine vigour or deviate from its original purpose. At certain periods in church history the tension between these two themes has broken out into open conflict, as happened with such dramatic results in the Reformation of the sixteenth century. The Protestant Reformers seem to present one of the most extreme cases where the desire for renewal triumphed over the instinct to preserve continuity of witness. A fundamentally novel analysis of the process by which human souls were saved was formulated by Martin Luther in the course of debate, and soon adopted or reinvented by others. This analysis was then used as a touchstone against which to test and to attack the most prominent features of contemporary teaching, worship, and church polity. In so far as any appeal was made to Christian antiquity, it was to the scriptural texts and to the early Fathers; though even the latter could be selected and criticized if they deviated from the primary articles of faith. There was, then, no reason why any of the Reformers should have sought to justify their actions by reference to any forbears or ‘forerunners’ in the Middle Ages, whether real or spurious. On the contrary, Martin Luther’s instinctive response towards those condemned by the medieval Church as heretics was to echo the conventional and prejudiced hostility felt by the religious intelligentsia towards those outside their pale.

Medieval Thought

2007 ◽  
Author(s):  
David Luscombe
Keyword(s):  
Sixteenth Century ◽  
Late Antiquity ◽  
The Other ◽  
Past Century ◽  
The Past ◽  
The Arts ◽  
The Reformation

This chapter examines contributions made by Fellows of the British Academy in the past century to the study of medieval thought. It explains that medieval thought is a lost term used to refer to the period between Late Antiquity and the Reformation of the sixteenth century, and a range of intellectual endeavour that embraces the arts of the trivium and the quadrivium, as well as the other branches of philosophy. It suggests that the British academic contribution to the study of medieval thought has been substantial but not very distinctive.

John Strype as a source for the study of sixteenth-century English church history

1975 ◽  
Vol 11 ◽  
pp. 237-247
Author(s):  
W. D. J. Cargill Thompson
Keyword(s):  
Sixteenth Century ◽  
Golden Age ◽  
Subsequent Development ◽  
Church History ◽  
The Other ◽  
English Reformation ◽  
Standard Source ◽  
Ecclesiastical History ◽  
The One

Because he was not a medievalist John Strype does not find a place in David Douglas’s classic study of the golden age of English antiquarian scholarship, English Scholars 1660–1730. Yet in terms both of his output and of his influence on the subsequent development of the study of English church history Strype is arguably one of the most important scholars that the age produced. Even to-day, nearly 250 years after his death, the twenty-five volumes of his works in the Clarendon press reissue of the 1820s are still a standard source for the study of English church history in the sixteenth century and it is difficult to open a book dealing with any aspect of the English reformation, which does not have its quota of references to Strype. At the same time, as any one who works on the period knows, Strype’s standing as an ecclesiastical historian is ambiguous. If, on the one hand, he is widely quoted, on the other, he is frequently attacked for his mistakes and his works are notoriously full of pitfalls for the unwary. It is therefore perhaps appropriate, in a volume devoted to ‘the Sources, Materials and Methods of Ecclesiastical History’, to consider, first, what is Strype’s value to-day as a source for the study of the English reformation and, secondly, the question of his reliability as a church historian. The two questions, one should stress, are distinct, although they are not unrelated.

‘An Honourable and Elect Lady’: The Faith of Isabel, Lady Bowes

1999 ◽  
Vol 12 ◽  
pp. 407-419
Author(s):  
Christine M. Newman
Keyword(s):  
Seventeenth Century ◽  
Sixteenth Century ◽  
The Other ◽  
Other Hand ◽  
The Reformation ◽  
The Family ◽  
The One

The Bowes of Streatlam, in the bishopric of Durham, were notable on two counts in the later part of the sixteenth century. On the one hand, they were highly regarded for their uncompromising loyalty to the Crown, an attachment which was to bring them disastrously close to the brink of financial ruin under the parsimonious Elizabeth, who repeatedly failed to reimburse and compensate them for activities undertaken in her name. On the other hand, the family was particularly noted in the religiously conservative north for its staunch adherence to the Protestant faith. The seeds of this Protestantism were in evidence from the earliest years of the Reformation, but it was given greater definition and inspiration by the example of Elizabeth Bowes, the ardent adherent and later mother-in-law of the Scottish reformer John Knox. Yet, if Elizabeth was the first, she was certainly not the only uncompromisingly Protestant matron in the Bowes family during this period. Towards the end of the sixteenth and beginning of the seventeenth century the second wife of her grandson Sir William Bowes was to assume Elizabeth’s spiritual mantle, thereby reinforcing still further the family’s attachment to the Reformed faith.

The Sermon as A Multimedial Instrument of Communication in the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth during the Reformation and Counter-Reformation

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Dalia Marija StančIene
Keyword(s):  
Sixteenth Century ◽  
Catholic Church ◽  
Martin Luther ◽  
The Other ◽  
Lay People ◽  
Counter Reformation ◽  
The Reformation ◽  
Important Means ◽  
The Church ◽  
The Catholic Church

Abstract At the end of the sixteenth century, during the Christianization of Lithuania, sermons became one of the most important means of communication. As a medium, the sermon functioned through systems of codified sounds and symbols, as well as representing the institution of the Church for which it served as a broadcaster. Increased attention to the sermon was prompted by the desire of the Catholic Church to resist the Reformation and to preserve its spiritual monopoly. Martin Luther and Erasmus of Rotterdam underlined the importance of preaching, claiming that preaching the Gospels could improve society. The Jesuits instructed preachers not to limit themselves to religious matters alone but also to pay attention to social and political problems. There were two kinds of sermon: one for churchmen, preached in Latin; the other for lay people, in the vernacular. The Jesuits trained priests to preach in Lithuanian.

Once Again, The Case of Richard Hunne

1969 ◽  
Vol 1 (1) ◽  
pp. 19-29 ◽  
Author(s):  
Gordon K. McBride
Keyword(s):  
Sixteenth Century ◽  
Focal Point ◽  
Source Material ◽  
Early Years ◽  
The Other ◽  
Thomas More ◽  
Royal Court ◽  
The Reformation ◽  
Sir Thomas More ◽  
Historical Controversy

On the morning of 4 December 1514, a certain London merchant-tailor, Richard Hunne by name, was found hanging in his cell in the Lollards' Tower at St. Paul's. On the surface this event might seem to be of little concern to anyone except Hunne. However, the death of this moderately well-to-do London businessman became caught up in the agitation against the clergy which presaged the Reformation in England. Indeed, Richard Hunne's case has become, as well, the focal point of a major and long-lasting historical controversy over the responsibility for Hunne's death. This controversy arises out of contradictory and confusing reports of the circumstances surrounding the event and the peculiar actions of the authorities, both royal and clerical, over an attempt to fix the responsibility for the death. One major body of source material, particularly the writings of Sir Thomas More, holds that Hunne had committed suicide and is supported by the decision of a royal court which found those accused of Hunne's death to be innocent. The other, which includes several Protestant chroniclers and writers, holds that Hunne was murdered by the ecclesiastical authorities of London and is supported by depositions from a coroner's inquest into the matter.The alleged facts of Hunne's death, minor event though it may have been, served to fan a wave of excitement in London, particularly since the event fell upon thoroughly receptive ears. The current anticlericalism received a major stimulus from Hunne's death.It is difficult to document the extent to which anticlericalism was present in London, let alone England at large, in the early years of the sixteenth century, but there was a dispute between the parishioners of London and their rectors over such matters as tithes, offerings and mortuary fees.3 In addition there had been some action, in an official sense, against the greatly abused benefit of clergy.

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