The Epistola Magistri Benedicti Passavantii (1553) or the Passavant is a satire in epistolary form, written by the reformer Theodore Beza and addressed to Pierre Lizet, ex-president of the Parliamant of Paris. He makes use of the satire in order to propagate the ideas of the Reformation: Sola Gratia, Sola Fide, Sola Scriptura. This edition contains, apart from the text in macaronic Latin, a translation in French and the first detailed commentary from a historical, theological and literary perspective. The introduction deals inter alia with the macaronic Latin and the influence...

In the Commentatio the 22-year-old Kuyper not only describes Calvin's and a Lasco's concepts of the Church, but also discusses them in the light of the Gospel. The Commentatio marks the beginning of modern a Lasco studies. The work also offers the initial impetus for the idea with which Kuyper would later exert great influence on Dutch nation and society: the Church as a free, democratic society of Christians, which manifests itself as a living organism in all spheres of life. The text, which has never been published before, is accompanied by historical and philological...

These essays examine the ideas that were important to monks and the intersections between the monks and the secular world. The volume explores the ideas and realities that shaped the lives of monks over the medieval millennium.

This book offers a new analysis of Reformed orthodoxy by focusing on several philosophy-related issues in the theology of three Dutch authors. It also portrays various ways in which philosophical views were appropriated, or rejected for biblical reasons.

Although scholarship has treated, on the one hand, some aspects of Jacobus Arminius's theology, and on the other hand, the doctrine of assurance in the Reformed theologians of early Protestant orthodoxy, nevertheless proper attention has not yet been given to the intersection of these topics: Arminius's doctrine of assurance. With special attention to previously neglected primary sources, this book offers stimulating insights into the academic context of Arminius, and, along with a comparative analysis of his colleagues at Leiden University, explores new horizons in his doctrines of salvation...

This volume concerns a music manuscript written at the end of the fifteenth century and associated with the Brethren of the Common Life at Zwolle. The manuscript is bound together with an incunable containing one of the most influential theological treatises of the Devotio moderna: the De spiritualibus ascensionibus of Gerard Zerbolt of Zutphen. The music manuscript contains 25 one-part hymns and two text excerpts on the Four Last Things (death, judgement, heaven, and hell), the core theme of the Brethren's penitential meditation. The book deals with the codicological...

This book makes a contribution to knowledge of the history of the Augustinian canons in England through a case study of one particular house in the south-west of the country. Plympton Priory in Devon was founded in 1121 by a bishop of Exeter, and through episcopal and lay donations of temporal and spiritual sources of income became one of the wealthiest houses of Augustinian canons in England. Analysis of surviving records reveals the multiplicity of connections existing between the canons and the laity, the secular clergy, the episcopacy, and the Crown until the priory's dissolution. The...

Throughout the European Middle Ages, the death of high-ranking prelates was usually interwoven with violent practices. During Empty Sees, mobs ransacked bishops' and popes' properties to loot their movable goods. Eventually, in the later Middle Ages, they also plundered the goods of newly-elected popes, and the cells of the Conclave. This book follows and analyzes the history of this violence, using a methodology akin to cultural anthropology, with concepts such as liminal periodization. It contends that pillaging was attached to ecclesiastical interregna, and the nature of ecclesiastical...

For a long time it was thought that there were no Middle Dutch sermons dating from the thirteenth century. It was only after J.P. Gumbert had redated the manuscript from The Hague containing the Limburg Sermons that its contents could be assigned to that century. Most of the Limburg Sermons appear to be translations of the Middle High German St. Georgen sermons. But sixteen of these texts are known only in Middle Dutch, and among these is to be found material drawn from the works of Hadewijch and Beatrijs van Nazareth. Thus the Limburg Sermons emerge to take their...

Models of Charitable Care analyses the practice of Catholic nuns in Amsterdam in the 19th and 20th century. Attention is paid to the ambiguous ascetic spiritual discourse that underpinned their work: it encouraged charity as solidarity with strangers, but caused intense emotional distance too. Historiography is mainly manufactured by religious and lay academics who shared the congregational perspective and presented fairly positive evaluations. Criticism from within, however, is voiced by care leavers who grew up in homes ran by religious. Some are grateful, others bitter. The sisters...