By proclaiming an earthly stage of bliss attributed to the Holy Spirit, Joachim of Fiore (d. 1202) fostered ideas of the Millennium and progression in history. His Trinitarian hermeneutics provided him with new insights to the Scriptures through which he viewed the history of salvation, prefigured in the Seven Seals of the Apocalypse. Joachim's treatise, De septem sigillis, edited for the first time from the complete corpus of manuscript evidence, outlines God's plan from the First Seal to the coming of Antichrist and the Last Judgment. This volume explains how deeply rooted in...

Peter Martyr Vermigli (1499-1562) was one of the early members of the abortive Italian reform movement as well as one of the formative shapers of Reformed Protestantism. Through its focus on Vermigli, these essays illuminate new dimensions to the various Reformations in sixteenth-century Europe, both Catholic and Protestant. Vermigli's work is considered under three rubrics: his relationship to other Reformers, an analysis of his more provocative theological ideas and his contributions to church reform. Particularly notable is the breadth of his interests, which ranged from his view of women,...

Calixtus II (1119-1124) transformed the orientation of the papacy by signing the Concordat of Worms with the emperor, Henry V, in 1122, resolving the conflict over imperial investiture of bishops. As the tough-minded archbishop of Vienne, he had opposed the emperor and anyone else who stood in his way.As pope, he aggressively promoted the authority of the papacy, but suffered defeat in South Italy. To gain Henry V's support, he jettisoned his life-long opposition, and compromised over investitures. Students of the medieval papacy will find that this new interpretation of a pivotal pope...

Luther described the Mass as the "greatest and most horrible abomination" of the papal church. On this, he argued, nothing could be surrendered. However, during the 1530s and early 1540s, the Strasbourg reformer Martin Bucer (1491-1551) sought rapprochement with the Catholics on precisely this matter. This book looks at Bucer's overtures to Catholic moderates in the era of the religious colloquies. He proposed to circumvent the Reformation impasse by returning to the Eucharistic theology of the church fathers and early scholastics. These efforts culminated in the Eucharistic articles of the...

Frommigkeit-Theologie-Frommigkeitstheologie: these terms stand for subject areas to which the Erlangen church historian Berndt Hamm has devoted special attention for many years. His meticulous and innovative work has borne fruit in countless publications concentrating especially on the late Middle Ages and the Reformation. Inspired by Hamm's research and responding to it in manifold ways, his colleagues and students from Europe and the U.S. present the fruits of their own work in the present volume, which in its contents stretches all the way from the renewal of penance in the early...