The Reformation of Feeling: Shaping the Religious Emotions in Early Modern Germany

ISBN-13: 9780199964017 / Angielski / Miękka / 2012 / 354 str.

Susan C. Karant-Nunn

Opis

In The Reformation of Feeling, Susan Karant-Nunn looks beyond and beneath the formal doctrinal and moral demands of the Reformation in Germany to examine the emotional tenor of the programs that the emerging creeds--revised Catholicism, Lutheranism, and Calvinism/Reformed theology--developed for their members. As revealed by the surviving sermons from this period, preaching clergy of each faith both explicitly and implicitly provided their listeners with distinct models of a mood to be cultivated. To encourage their parishioners to make an emotional investment in their faith, all three groups drew upon rhetorical elements that were already present in late medieval Catholicism and elevated them into confessional touchstones.

This book is exceptional in its presentation of a cultural rather than theological or behavioral study of the broader movement to remake Christianity. As Karant-Nunn conclusively demonstrates, in the eyes of the Reformation's formative personalities strict adherence to doctrine and upright demeanor did not constitute an adequate piety. The truly devout had to engage their hearts in their faith.

Recenzje

The Reformation of Feeling emphasizes the relative radicalism of the sixteenth-century Reformed Protestant tradition... This valuable book raises questions about which disciplines and types of sources to privilege when trying to write the history of emotions five centuries ago.

O autorze

Susan C. Karant-Nunn is Regents' Professor of History and Director of the Division for Late Medieval and Reformation Studies at the University of Arizona.