“The Lord Has Done Great Things for Us”: The 1817 Reformation Celebrations and the End of the Counter-Reformation in the Habsburg Lands

2016 ◽  
Vol 49 (1) ◽  
pp. 69-92
Author(s):  
Scott Berg

AbstractIn anticipation of the upcoming five-hundreth anniversary in 2017 of the start of the Reformation, this article addresses the memory of this event in Central Europe by focusing on the tricentennial celebrations of 1817. The jubilees that took place that year were unique in that they were the first ones characterized by an ecumenical spirit. The article focuses on the Habsburg lands, where the 1817 jubilees were especially significant because of the recent dismantling of the Counter-Reformation by Emperor Joseph II and the favorable policies for Protestants pursued by his conservative successors. Using sermons and state records from archives in Vienna and Budapest, the article argues that the Austrian government used this event to display its newfound policies of religious toleration. Although the Austrian celebrations mirrored, in many respects, the ones in the German states, the infamous censorship regime of the pre-1848 Habsburg government paradoxically promoted an atmosphere of toleration that ensured the ecumenical nature of the celebrations in the Habsburg Empire.

2019 ◽  
Vol 78 (2) ◽  
pp. 187-207 ◽  
Author(s):  
Dragan Damjanović

The Military Frontier, an administrative unit within the Habsburg Empire, was established during the sixteenth century to consolidate the border with the Ottoman Empire. In Building the Frontier of the Habsburg Empire: Viennese Authorities and the Architecture of Croatian-Slavonian Military Frontier Towns, 1780–1881, Dragan Damjanović considers architecture and urban planning there from the time Emperor Joseph II assumed the throne until the Frontier was abolished in 1881. Beginning with an overview of the region's architecture, urban design, and administrative organization, Damjanović proceeds to an examination of how modernization processes and the gradual demilitarization of the Frontier affected architecture and planning there. As they did for other provinces, Viennese authorities commissioned numerous new public and church buildings for the region—part of a larger effort toward modernization. Showing the influence of a variety of styles then fashionable elsewhere in Central Europe, these buildings were nonetheless well adapted to their local circumstances.


Moreana ◽  
2012 ◽  
Vol 49 (Number 187- (1-2) ◽  
pp. 207-226
Author(s):  
Marie-Claire Phélippeau

This study examines the notions of pleasure, individual liberty and consensus in Thomas More’s Utopia. The paradox inherent in Utopia, written before the Reformation, is especially visible in the affirmation of religious toleration coexisting with the need for a strict supervision of the citizens. The dream of an ideal republic is based on a Pauline vision of man which defines the individual mainly as a sinner. Consequently, it is the duty of the republic’s rulers to guide the citizens and establish a consensus. This study tries to determine the part left to the individual’s free will and examines the nature and function of the structures that are supposed to ensure the happiness of each one and of the whole community. The notion of moral hierarchy is asserted as the linchpin of the Utopian social construction.


Author(s):  
Chad van Dixhoorn

The seventeenth century marked a high point in the Presbyterian experiment. A variety of models were tested internationally, and apologists for its polity offered a rigorous defense against Episcopalians, Congregationalists, and Erastians. The Westminster Assembly offered Presbyterians the first opportunity since the Reformation to model a fully Reformed church in England, and the gathering looked closely not only at the teachings of Scripture on ecclesial governance, but also at historical and contemporary models of connectional, nonhierarchical government to guide their formulations on church polity. The century also saw some of the worst persecution of Presbyterians, especially in France and Scotland, but also in England and central Europe. During their seasons of suffering, some Presbyterians found subtle ways to articulate their polity or identify essential elements of Presbyterianism. Others fought or fled hostile authorities, supplying a legacy of martyr narratives and missionary impulses for later Presbyterians.


2019 ◽  
Vol 25 (2) ◽  
pp. 207-219
Author(s):  
Paulina Michalska-Górecka

The history of the lexeme konfessyjonista shows that the word is a neologism that functioned in the literature of the sixteenth century in connection with religious documents/books, such as the Protestant confessions. Formally and semantically, it refers to Confessio Augustana, also to her Polish translations, and to the Konfesja sandomierska, as well as konfessyja as a kind of genre. In the Reformation and Counter-Reformation period, the word konfessyja was needed by the Protestants; the word konfessyjonista was derived from him by the Catholics for their needs. The lexeme had an offensive tone and referred to a confessional supporter as a supporter of the Reformation. Perhaps the oldest of his certifications comes from an anonymous text from 1561, the year in which two Polish translations of Augustana were announced. The demand for a konfessyjonista noun probably did not go beyond the 16th century, its notations come only from the 60s, 70s and 80s of this century.


2018 ◽  
Vol 10 (1) ◽  
pp. 105-115
Author(s):  
Levente Pap

AbstractThe relatively short history of the Transylvanian Principality (one hundred and fifty years or so) was full of unexpected changes. From the tragic Battle of Mohács, fought against the Ottoman invasion (1526), until the Diploma Leopoldinum, which integrated the Principality in the huge Habsburg Empire, events like the rise of Lutheran, Calvinian or Unitarian reforms, the Catholic Reformation or Counter-Reformation – despite the Edict of Torda in 1568, which declared religious tolerance and freedom of conscience – brought forth more disagreements. In the 1670s a new population coming from Moldova appeared in the Principality: the Armenians. The history of the establishment of this population was mentioned by the Catholic priest István Lakatos in his work Siculia (1702). Through the analysis of this work, we search for answers to the question regarding the relatively short integration period of this ethnic group.


2019 ◽  
Vol 66 (2 SELECTED PAPERS IN ENGLISH) ◽  
pp. 31-42
Author(s):  
Bogumił Szady

The Polish version of the article was published in “Roczniki Humanistyczne,” vol. 61 (2013), issue 2. The article addresses the question of the fall of the Latin parish in Chorupnik that belonged to the former diocese of Chełm. The parish church in Chorupnik was taken over by Protestants in the second half of the 16th century. Unsuccessful attempts at recovering its property were made by incorporating it into the neighbouring parish in Gorzków. The actions taken by the Gorzków parish priest and the bishop together with his chapter failed, too. A detailed study of such attempts to recover the property of one of the parishes that ceased to exist during the Reformation falls within the context of the relations between the nobility and the clergy in the period of Counter-Reformation. Studying the social, legal and economic relations in a local dimension is important for understanding the mechanisms of the mass transition of the nobility to reformed denominations, and then of their return to the Catholic Church.


Author(s):  
Michael S. Horton

This overview chapter for the second part of the book contrasts the theologies of the sacraments in the Reformation era with those of the Catholic Counter-Reformation. Salvation in the Protestant view meant believers are “justified by grace alone, through faith alone, in Jesus Christ alone.” This differed significantly from the Roman Catholic position in which “‘created’ grace is a substance infused into the sinner to bring spiritual and moral healing.” For the Reformers grace was not a created substance but God’s attitude or disposition of favor toward sinners. This dependency on grace alone involved both preaching “as a means of grace in its own right” and the sacraments as involving “the divine activity that gives efficacy to Baptism and Communion.” While they differed somewhat in their theologies of the sacraments, Luther, Calvin, Zwingli, Cranmer, and other Reformers were in agreement in that the grace of God in Jesus Christ is presented in the Word preached and the Sacrament administered.


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