This book is the history of an imaginary people -- the Red Jews -- in vernacular sources from medieval and early modern Germany. From the twelfth to the seventeenth century, German-language texts repeated and embroidered on an antisemitic tale concerning an epochal threat to Christianity, the Red Jews. This term, which expresses a medieval conflation of three separate traditions (the biblical destroyers Gog and Magog, the 'unclean peoples' enclosed by Alexander, and the Ten Lost Tribes of Israel), is a hostile designation of wickedness. The Red Jews played a major role in late medieval...

The Uses of Reform is a study of the Reformation as a movement for behavioral reform, concentrating on Scotland during the first fifty years (1560-1610) of its Reformation as a primary example. The opening chapters trace the development of "Godly Discipline" as part of the European-wide reform movement. Graham follows this general narrative with a study of the creation and implementation of a disciplinary system in Scotland. Finally, he compares disciplinary practices in the Scottish Church with those of the Huguenot communities of France. Looking closely at the proceedings of church...

Erasmus - Der Humanist als Theologe und Kirchenreformer deals with Erasmus' person and work: his development, the main themes of his world of thought, some of his important works and his influence on contemporaries. The twenty articles in this book together draw a coherent picture of the man from Rotterdam. Erasmus is placed in the context of the intellectual movements of his time. Special attention is given to the attitude he adopts in the tension between Renaissance Humanism and Reformation. The relationship between Erasmus and Luther is the subject of several articles. Seven of the...

Carlo and Federico Borromeo achieved fame by turning Milan into the foremost laboratory of the Italian Counter-Reformation. This monograph, the first on the subject to appear in English, interprets their program of penitential discipline as a quest to reshape Lombard society by reaching into the souls of its inhabitants. This integration of the public and private spheres had vast implications - the transformation of the clergy into a professional body, a bureaucratic-juridical turn in sacramental practice, interventions in the ritual order (notably the introduction of the confessional), and...

Migration is a fundamental feature of human experience. This extraordinary collection of essays focuses on a particularly intriguing sequence of migrations: those of Scots during the period 1600-1800. The book first considers the "near-abroad" (Ireland), the "middle-abroad" (Poland and Lithuania), and the "far-abroad" (the Americas), and then details a number of acutely revealing case histories of Scottish communities in Bergen (Norway), Rotterdam and the Maas (the Netherlands), Gothenburg (Sweden), Kedainiai (Lithuania), and Hamburg (Germany). Then, concentrating on the Netherlands, the...

This collection of essays covers relations between town and country, regional economic systems, and historical regional studies in late medieval and early modern Germany, in particular how these bear upon social and religious change in the age of the Reformation. Starting from case-studies of South-West Germany, Switzerland and Alsace, the essays broaden out to consider the formation of economic landscapes, the development of urban territories, and the survival of forms of serfdom throughout Germany as a whole. While issues of economic and social structure take pride of place, they are...

This volume deals with the intellectual world of "progressive" Benedictine and Cistercian monks who vicariously represent humanists in cloisters (Klosterhumanismus, Bibelhumanismus) in German speaking lands: Conradus Leontorius (1460-1511), Maulbronn, Benedictus Chelidonius (c.1460-1521), Nuremberg and Vienna, Bolfgangus Marius (1469-1544), Aldersbach in Bavaria, Henricus Urbanus (c. 1470-c.1539), Georgenthal in the region of Gotha and Erfurt, Vitus Bild Acropolitanus (1481-1529), Augsburg, and Nikolaus Ellenbog (1481-1543), Ottobeuren in Swabia. For the first time in...

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...

Was there such a thing as 'public opinion' before the age of newspapers and party politics? The essays in this collection show that in the Low Countries, at least, there certainly was. In this highly urbanised society, with high literacy rates and good connections, news and public debate could spread fast in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, enabling the growth of powerful opposition movements against the Crown, the creation of the Dutch Republic, and of the distinctive Netherlandish culture of the Golden Age. Contributors include: Hugh Dunthorne, Raingard Esser, Jonathan Israel,...

This study describes the origins of early Reformed confessional development using the example of those congregations of religious refugees most heavily influenced by John Laski: the congregation at Emden and the Dutch and French Strangers' Churches in London. At its center are questions about the congregation as the location of ecclesiology. The outlines of Laski's theology--which viewed the congregation as the communion of the body of Christ--are described in comparison to the approaches of other Reformers and in relationship to daily reality in the second half of the sixteenth century....