This volume is the first comprehensive study of the work of the Society of Jesus in the British Isles during the sixteenth century. Beginning with an account of brief papal missions to Ireland (1541) and Scotland (1562), it goes on to cover the foundation of a permanent mission to England (1580) and the frustration of Catholic hopes with the failure of the Spanish Armada (1588). Throughout the book, the activities of the Jesuits - preaching, propaganda, prayer and politics - are set within a wider European context, and within the framework of the Society's Constitutions. In particular,...

This volume examines the changing religious attitudes, political strategies, and resistance activities of Theodore of Beza and other French Protestant leaders between the Saint Bartholomew's Day massacres (1572) and the Edict of Nantes (1598). Drawing on the reformer's published and unpublished letters, city archival materials in Geneva, and rare Huguenot books and pamphlets, this study documents how Beza and his Reformed colleagues attempted to ensure the survival of the Protestant churches in France in the face of protracted civil war and repeated political and religious setbacks.
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Responding to Bishop Robert Ceneau, Sorbonnist, Bucer's subject-matter is twofold. Firstly, maintained is the compatibility of Reformation theology with Scripture, Patristic testimony, and the "saner Scholastics." Secondly, denying association with the heresy of Berengar, Bucer develops his perception of a common eucharistic theology among the Reformers, a theology Bucer finds corroborated in Scripture and Christian antiquity. After a plea for a fair hearing for the Reformation in France, Part I irenically surveys controverted dogmas and practices. Part II substantiates the thesis of...

The study is dedicated to Bonagratia of Bergamo, a Franciscan layman of the 14th century, who played an important part in his Order's controversy with the Spirituals and in the debate of the poverty of Christ. Together with his general minister Michael of Cesena, William of Ockham and Francis of Ascoli, Bonagratia came into conflict with Pope John XXII and wrote many polemical texts and his famous appellationes. A detailed study of these writings elaborates Bonagratias intellectual merits as a legal expert and as the procurator of the Franciscan Order. Wittneben demonstrates that the...

This volume contains 11 contributions that open up unknown and unstudied sources for the culture of nunneries in the later Middle Ages using examples from Germany, Switzerland and England. It focuses on the spiritual life of nuns, their education and vocational training, forms of art and piety, legal status position, and aspects of monastic architecture. Edited here for the first time are a treatise or Sendbrief on simony, a Low-German rule for Franciscan nuns, and documents on the reformation history of North-German nunneries. Art-historical contributions discuss the relationship of...