Moger’s study explores the personal experience of those who found themselves on the ‘losing side’ of the Reformation. Using the private diary of Catholic priest, Wolfgang Königstein, Moger discusses the early years of Protestantism and its effects on the lives of German Catholics.
Moger’s study explores the personal experience of those who found themselves on the ‘losing side’ of the Reformation. Using the private diary of Catholic priest, Wolfgang Königstein, Moger discusses the early years of Protestantism and its effects on the lives of German Catholics.
Celestial phenomena were often harnessed for use by clerics in early modern Germany. Kurihara examines how and why interest in these events grew in this period, how the clergy exploited these beliefs and the role of sectarianism in Germany at this time.
This collection of essays looks at the shared experience of exile across different groups in the early modern period. Contributors argue that exile is a useful analytical tool in the study of a wide variety of peoples previously examined in isolation.
Challenging accepted notions of Elizabethan foreign policy, Gehring argues that the Queen’s relationship with the Protestant Princes of the Holy Roman Empire was more of a success than has been previously thought. Based on extensive archival research, he contends that the enthusiastic and continual correspondence and diplomatic engagement between Elizabeth and these Protestant allies demonstrate a deeply held sympathy between the English Church and State and those of Germany and Denmark.
Despite the best efforts of the English government, Elizabethan Ireland remained resolutely Catholic. Hutchinson examines this ‘failure’ of the Protestant Reformation. He argues that the emerging political concept of the absolutist state forms a crucial link between English policy in Ireland and the aims of the Calvinist reformers.
Hillman presents a fascinating account of the role that women played during the Catholic Reformation in France. She reconstructs the devotional practices of a network of powerful women showing how they reconciled Catholic piety with their roles as part of an aristocratic elite, challenging the view that the Catholic Reformation was a male concern.
In the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, conversion took on a new importance within the Catholic world, as its leaders faced the challenge of expanding the church's reach to new peoples and continents while at the same time reinforcing its authority in the Old World. Based on new archival research, this book details the extraordinary stories of converts who embraced a new religious identity in a territory where papal authority and Catholic orthodoxy were arguably at their strongest: the Italian peninsula. Through an analysis of both the unique strategies employed by clerics to attract and educate converts, and the biographies of the men and women—soldiers, aristocrats, and charlatans—who negotiated new positions for themselves in Rome and the other cities of the peninsula, a new image of Italy during the Counter-reformation emerges: a place where repression and toleration alternated in unexpected ways, leaving room for negotiation and exchange with members of rival faiths.
Exile was a central feature of society throughout the early modern world. For this reason the contributors to this volume see exile as a critical framework for analysing and understanding society at this time.