This book presents the life and thought of Hans Denck (1550-1527), the contemplative genius of the Anabaptist movement. The author examines the medieval context, mystic content, and Jewish roots of Denck's spirituality and translates into English his theological treatises, the original German of which is reprinted on facing pages.
These texts convey with unmatched brilliance rare depths of mystic insight on many facets of faith and life, good and evil, truth and love, perfection and depravity. they explore knowledge of God within his and beyond creation, explain how Christ through us...

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,...

From the Communal Reformation to the Revolution of the Common Man brings together important studies related to a coherent interpretation of the Reformation and the Peasants War of 1525 as a mass movement, rooted in the structures of the communities of towns and villages. The volume presents both detailed studies from the archives and conceptualized essays.

This important volume presents the first comprehensive history of early modern La Rochelle, a port town whose fractious residents became embroiled in the French Reformations.
Opening chapters situate the Rochelais within the geopolitics of an oceanic frontier, where urbanites created a strong, heavily armed civic government, in part because they perceived themselves as isolated civilizing agents surrounded by the savage inhabitants of a lawless environment.
Analysis of the city's Reformation proceeds within this context of place and politics, showing how various ranks of the citizenry...

The sale of indulgences is considered to be the starting point of Martin Luther's Reformation. On the basis of the indulgence instructions the present book devotes its first part to the vagueness and inconsistencies of the indulgence as it was seen by Cardinal Cajetan, the leading Roman theologian in the time of Luther. It then deals with the dispute between Cajetan and Luther's writings. In its third part the book reaches out as far as the year 1522, when Cajetan, commenting on the Summa of Thomas Aquina, gives his final opinion on the indulgence. Presenting the theological confrontations on...

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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Urban histories have emphasized the rise of civic autonomy and proto-democracy. Based on chronicle and archival sources, this volume focuses on German bishops, former lords of the city and fierce opponents of civic freedom. The author investigates how bishops contested exclusion from political, economic, and religious dimensions of civic life (Episcopus exclusus), which culminated in the Protestant Reformation.
Four chapters are devoted to episcopal expulsion throughout Germany and the cities of Constance and Augsburg in particular. A remarkable section explores the puzzle of the bishop's...

An exploration of the interaction between art and politics in early modern Germany, this work focuses on art, political in content, produced by the Augsburg artist Jorg Breu the Elder during the second and third decodes of the sixteenth century. The book argues for the function of the art as fashioning political identities. The artist Jorg Breu is first introduced. His work for the city of Augsburg and for Habsburg and Wittelsbach rulers are examined. These works are placed within their historical context and analyzed according to how they articulate themes of warfare, ceremony, and history...