The late Bob Scribner was one of the most original and provocative historians of the German Reformation. His truly pioneering spirit comes to light in this collection of his most recent essays.
In the years before his death, Scribner explored the role of the senses in late medieval devotional culture, and wondered how the Reformation changed sensual attitudes. Further essays examine the nature of popular culture and the way the Reformation was institutionalised, considering Anabaptist ideals of the community of goods, literacy and heterodoxy, and the dynamics of power as they unfold in a...

In the Tudor struggle for Reformation and Catholic Reformation, for power and for souls, Richard Smyth, theologian and educator, refined the art of polemicism to fight against the advance of heresy at home and abroad, both in the lingua franca of academic circles and the language of his own people. A much neglected voice today, Smyth spoke passionately and influentially on justification, monastic vows, and the Eucharist. He clashed with leading reformers such as Bucer, Cranmer, Jewel and Vermigli in verbal debates and in print. New evidence from Douai shows how he trained and equipped a...

This volume is divided into four sections: late medieval devotion in the Netherlands; medieval Christian pilgrimage; the medieval cult of St. James the Great and Erasmiana. Variety and coherence sound the keynote in the title and the contents of the book. Religious concepts and expressions of religious faith such as pilgrimages and indulgences are representative of late-medieval Christianity. In this book they refer specifically to the medieval cult of St. James the Great, while for Erasmus they were an object of his critical consideration. The whole book can be read in the light of the...

This study examines the emergence and early history of copyright in Venice and Rome, focusing in particular on the privilegio and the use made of it by printers, publishers, engravers, painters, architects, mapmakers, and others in the sixteenth century to protect their commercial interests in various types of printed images. These include separately sold engravings, woodcuts, and etchings, as well as illustrations in books. The first part of the book surveys printmaking and the privilegio in sixteenth-century Venice and Rome together with the related issues of licensing and...

This study examines one of the most unusual figures of the sixteenth century, Guillaume Postel, who believed that a female messiah had arrived on earth who would usher in a new age of political and religious harmony. He grounded this prophecy in the Kabbalah, the Jewish mystical tradition, and relied extensively on its use of gender symbolism. Postel has often been viewed as a marginal figure, whose unconventional views preclude comparison with his contemporaries. However, this study suggests that Postel used his prophecy to participate in two arenas: Reformation controversy and the...

This interdisciplinary study interprets the facade of Wells Cathedral as an integral part of thirteenth-century English Church liturgy and politics. Carolyn Malone posits that architectural motifs, as signs, complemented not only the facade's sculptural program of the Church Triumphant but also its use during liturgical processions. Interpreted as an ideological construct, the facade's design is related to theological change, liturgical innovation and political strategy, as well as to the conjuncture of several major historical and cultural events of the 1220s. As part of the Church's...