This is a study of the religious controversy that broke out with Martin Luther, from the vantage of church property. The controversy eventually produced a Holy Roman Empire of two churches. This is not an economic history. Rather, the book shows how acceptance of confiscation was won, and how theological advice was essential to the success of what is sometimes called a crucial if early stage of confessional state-building. It reviews the character of sacred property in the late Middle Ages, surveys confiscations in Reformation Germany on illustrative examples, summarizes the League of...

These twenty-three essays, presented by students, colleagues, and friends to Thomas A. Brady, Jr., the Sather Emeritus Professor of History at the University of California at Berkeley, explore the historiographies of the Reformation from the fifteenth century to the present and study the social and cultural history of religion from the sixteenth to eighteenth centuries, especially in Germany but also in Switzerland, the Netherlands, and colonial Mexico. Contributors include: Dean Bell, Peter Blickle, Christoph Burger, Roger Chickering, Constantin Fasolt, Kaspar von Greyerz, Bernd Hamm, Craig...

Christopher Ocker's book is a study of the interpretation of the Bible in the late Middle Ages. He argues that interpreters developed a biblical poetics very similar to that cultivated and promoted by Protestants in the sixteenth century, which was reinforced by the adaptation of humanist rhetoric to Bible reading after Lorenzo Valla. This comparative study is derived from a variety of unpublished commentaries as well as more familiar works by Nicholas of Lyra, John Wyclif, Jean Gerson, Denys the Carthusian, Wendelin Steinbach, Desiderius Erasmus, Philip Melanchthon, and John Calvin.

Christopher Ocker's book is a study of the interpretation of the Bible in the late Middle Ages. He argues that interpreters developed a biblical poetics very similar to that cultivated and promoted by Protestants in the sixteenth century, which was reinforced by the adaptation of humanist rhetoric to Bible reading after Lorenzo Valla. This comparative study is derived from a variety of unpublished commentaries as well as more familiar works by Nicholas of Lyra, John Wyclif, Jean Gerson, Denys the Carthusian, Wendelin Steinbach, Desiderius Erasmus, Philip Melanchthon, and John Calvin.

Martin Luther was the subject of a religious controversy that never really came to an end. The Reformation was a controversy about him.

Martin Luther was the subject of a religious controversy that never really came to an end. This book describes the main features of 'the matter of Martin Luther' in its original environment, and it poses an argument about the contributions of the conflict over Luther to the place of religion in European and post-colonial societies today.