This book is a compact, accessible history of the continent, during a time when it did not yet dominate the world in which it was situated. The text discusses the major events of the period, and also seeks to restore interconnections lost by thinkers who divided the period into "The Renaissance" and "The Reformation." With twenty-five illustrations and nine detailed maps, this short textbook is perfect for students of European history.

Between roughly 1350 and 1650, Europe underwent seismic changes in economics, politics, culture, and religion. Feudal monarchies were reconceived as abstract states. The new technology of the printing press transformed how information was disseminated, bringing texts to different social groups. Painters perfected the artifice of perspective for an increasingly commercial patronage, even as they themselves cultivated the value of their own "genius" through increasingly distinctive styles and visions. Reformers called into question 1500 years of tradition, splitting the One True Church into...

We have learned a great deal in recent years about keeping death at bay through medical technology. We are less well informed, however, about how to face death and how to understand or articulate the emotional and spiritual needs of the dying. This profound and eloquent book brings together medical experts and distinguished authorities in the humanities to reflect on medical, cultural, and religious responses to death. The book helps both medical personnel and patients to view death less as an adversary and more as a defining part of life. In the first half of the book, physicians and the...

In this elegantly written book, Lee Wandel discusses the relationship between the reform of poor relief and the Protestant Reformation in early sixteenth-century Zurich. In the introduction she traces the various ways that poverty has been evaluated, and its social and religious connotations, up to the sixteenth century. After providing a portrait of sixteenth-century Zurich, the author goes on to explore the discussion of the poor in various media of the town: the sermons and pamphlets of Huldrych Zwingli, who was preaching that the poor were the true images of God; printed images depicting...

This study traces the evolution of the words, "this is my body," "this do," and "remembrance of me" that divided Christendom in the sixteenth century. Lee Wandel focuses on the consequences of the different interpretations of these simple words in the delineation of the Lutheran, Reformed, and Catholic traditions. Finally, Wandel argues that the incarnation is at the center of the story of the Reformation and suggests how divergent religious identities were formed.

This volume presents essays from eight scholars who trained with Robert Kingdon, a vanguard of early modern studies. He required students to go to primary sources, yet they were free to pursue their own curiosity. No matter what their approach to the sources, students were held to a high standard of thoroughness, precision, and attention to detail. This festschrift displays something of the diversity of language, source materials, methods, and visions that Kingdon encouraged in his students during his forty-year career in graduate education.

This is an effort to recover the participation of ordinary Christians in the enterprise of Reformation through an exploration of the meaning of acts of iconoclasm: what they tell us about the role of images in Christianity and about ordinary people's theologies. Its focus, on ordinary Christians, distinguishes it from other studies of Reformation iconoclasm. Its concern, to recover their agency in Reformation and to discern their theology in acts, may be of interest to scholars in American history, anthropology, and religious studies.

This is an effort to recover the participation of ordinary Christians in the enterprise of Reformation through an exploration of the meaning of acts of iconoclasm: what they tell us about the role of images in Christianity and about ordinary people's theologies. Its focus, on ordinary Christians, distinguishes it from other studies of Reformation iconoclasm. Its concern, to recover their agency in Reformation and to discern their theology in acts, may be of interest to scholars in American history, anthropology, and religious studies.

In this elegantly written book, Lee Wandel discusses the relationship between the reform of poor relief and the Protestant Reformation in early sixteenth-century Zurich. In the introduction she traces the various ways that poverty has been evaluated, and its social and religious connotations, up to the sixteenth century. After providing a portrait of sixteenth-century Zurich, the author goes on to explore the discussion of the poor in various media of the town: the sermons and pamphlets of Huldrych Zwingli, who was preaching that the poor were the true images of God; printed images depicting...