Church History, Censorship, and Confessionalization

2019 ◽  
pp. 146-206
Author(s):  
Stefan Bauer
Keyword(s):  
Fifteenth Century ◽  
Church History ◽  
The Reformation ◽  
Carlo Sigonio ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Subject ◽  
Historia Ecclesiastica

This chapter begins by examining the interrelationship of history and theology. From the Reformation onwards, church history presented a challenge to each confession in its own right. Protestants re-invented the prevailing models of church history; Catholics responded by underlining the uninterrupted continuity of the apostolic traditions. The second section of the chapter concentrates on the genre of papal biography, reviewing the various contemporary authors who wrote on the subject. By editing and continuing the humanist Bartolomeo Platina’s standard papal biographies from the fifteenth century, Panvinio put himself in the position of being considered the most important authority on papal history. The censorship of historical works by Catholic theologians is then discussed by comparing the cases of other important authors including Carlo Sigonio. The chapter investigates the question of the extent to which Panvinio’s unpublished Church History (Historia ecclesiastica) was an expression of the confessionalization of historiography. There follows a discussion of the censorships of several of Panvinio’s works, including that of his history of papal elections carried out by the Spanish jurist Francisco Peña and the German Jesuit Jakob Gretser.

Literature on Church History, 1914–1920. III. The Reformation and the Counter-Reformation

1924 ◽  
Vol 17 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-49
Keyword(s):  
Church History ◽  
Counter Reformation ◽  
The Reformation ◽  
Special Value ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Subject ◽  
Scandinavian Literature

In treating the history of the Reformation, I am especially indebted to the material gathered by Dr. Preserved Smith under the title, ‘A Decade of Luther Study,’ in this Review for April, 1921 (pp. 107–135). This enables me to be brief in dealing with the general literature of the subject, but as Dr. Smith in many cases gave only references without comment, and as he was not able to include the Scandinavian literature, at least a few works of special value must be noted here.

scholarly journals What Is Charity? William Langland’s Answers with Some Diachronic Questions

Religions ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 10 (8) ◽  
pp. 458
Author(s):  
David Aers
Keyword(s):  
Fourteenth Century ◽  
Piers Plowman ◽  
Late Medieval ◽  
The Reformation ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Subject ◽  
Medieval Christianity ◽  
Ethics And Politics

Charity turns out to be the virtue which is both the root and the fruit of salvation in Langland’s Piers Plowman, a late fourteenth-century poem, the greatest theological poem in English. It takes time, suffering and error upon error for Wille, the central protagonist in Piers Plowman, to grasp Charity. Wille is both a figure of the poet and a power of the soul, voluntas, the subject of charity. Langland’s poem offers a profound and beautiful exploration of Charity and the impediments to Charity, one in which individual and collective life is inextricably bound together. This exploration is characteristic of late medieval Christianity. As such it is also an illuminating work in helping one identify and understand what happened to this virtue in the Reformation. Only through diachronic studies which engage seriously with medieval writing and culture can we hope to develop an adequate grasp of the outcomes of the Reformation in theology, ethics and politics, and, I should add, the remakings of what we understand by “person” in these outcomes. Although this essay concentrates on one long and extremely complex medieval work, it actually belongs to a diachronic inquiry. This will only be explicit in some observations on Calvin when I consider Langland’s treatment of Christ’s crucifixion and in some concluding suggestions about the history of this virtue.

IV. John Lingard and the Simancas Archives

1967 ◽  
Vol 10 (1) ◽  
pp. 57-76
Author(s):  
Edwin Jones
Keyword(s):  
Sixteenth Century ◽  
Point Of View ◽  
English History ◽  
Parish Priest ◽  
The Reformation ◽  
The World ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Subject ◽  
State Archives ◽  
Source Materials

John Lingard (1771–1851) was the first English historian to attempt to look at the history of England in the sixteenth century from an international point of view. He was unconvinced by the story of the Reformation in England as found in the works of previous historians such as Burnet and Hume, and believed that new light needed to be thrown on the subject. One way of doing this was to look at English history from the outside, so to speak, and Lingard held it to be a duty of the historian ‘to contrast foreign with native authorities, to hold the balance between them with an equal hand, and, forgetting that he is an Englishman, to judge impartially as a citizen of the world’. In pursuit of this ideal Lingard can be said to have given a new dimension to the source materials for English history. As parish priest in the small village of Hornby, near Lancaster, Lingard had few opportunities for travel. But he made good use of his various friends and former pupils at Douai and Ushaw colleges who were settled now in various parts of Europe. It was with the help of these friends that Lingard made contacts with and gained valuable information from archives in France, Italy and Spain. We shall concern ourselves here only with the story of Lingard's contacts with the great Spanish State Archives at Simancas.

Heresy hunt: Gilbert Burnet and the convocation controversy of 1701

1994 ◽  
Vol 37 (3) ◽  
pp. 569-592 ◽  
Author(s):  
Martin Greig
Keyword(s):  
Church History ◽  
Anglican Church ◽  
Lower House ◽  
The Reformation ◽  
History Of ◽  
High Church ◽  
The Trinity

ABSTRACTThe aim of the high church agitation in the 1690s for a convocation was to establish doctrinal discipline within the anglican church. When convocation met in 1701 the lower house produced censures on Toland's Christianity not mysterious and Burnet's Exposition of the thirty-nine articles.It was Francis Atterbury who insisted that Burnet's Exposition was heretical. He had long been critical of Burnet's views on the trinity and his erastian interpretation of English church history in his History of the reformation. And if Burnet's History was an attempt re-write English church history from the perspective of a latitudinarian, then his Exposition was its theological counterpart.It was assumed that the charges against Burnet were lost. But a copy of them has surfaced and it confirms that it was the connection between latitudinarians and dissent which led to the attack on Burnet. In his zeal to heal divisions within anglicanism and between anglicans and other protestants Burnet had introduced a ‘latitude and diversity of opinions’ which misrepresented true anglican doctrine. This was dangerous, because Burnet intended his Exposition as ‘a platform laid for Comprehension’ with the dissenters and other ‘Adversaries of our Church’. These included obvious heretics like socinians and the deist Toland.

An Accidental Historian: Erasmus and the English History of the Reformation

2013 ◽  
Vol 82 (2) ◽  
pp. 273-292 ◽  
Author(s):  
Gregory D. Dodds
Keyword(s):  
Mental Image ◽  
Historical Consciousness ◽  
Church History ◽  
Desiderius Erasmus ◽  
English History ◽  
Catholic Clergy ◽  
The Reformation ◽  
History Of ◽  
English Speaking ◽  
Historical Authority

When post-Reformation English authors sought to describe pre-Reformation Catholicism, they turned to the writings of Desiderius Erasmus for historical evidence to back up their arguments justifying the break from Rome. For many later English schoolboys, Erasmus was one of the only Catholic authors they read and the depictions of Catholicism found in the Praise of Folly and, especially, in the Colloquies, became their picture of Catholic clergy, as well as foundational imprints for their mental image of relics, pilgrimages, and other Catholic practices. References to Erasmus as a historical authority for his times appear in dozens, if not hundreds, of texts from the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Ignoring the literary and fictitious nature of Erasmus's satirical texts, they used Erasmus to justify their depictions of Catholic corruption, superstition, and irrationality. Over time, these descriptions became an almost uncritically accepted portrayal of the Catholic world prior to the rise of Protestantism. This constructed reality thus became the worldview of English speaking Protestants from the mid-sixteenth century up to nearly the present. Examining how later English authors used Erasmus helps us understand the subsequent nature of English historical consciousness and the development of English and Protestant narratives of Church history.

Melancthon's “Synergism.”

1889 ◽  
Vol 1 ◽  
pp. 185-204
Author(s):  
Frank Hugh Foster
Keyword(s):  
Large Degree ◽  
Human Mind ◽  
Evangelical Church ◽  
Human Reason ◽  
The Bible ◽  
Great Mind ◽  
The Reformation ◽  
Reformation Theology ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Subject

The problems of anthropology depend for their solution in an unusually large degree upon psychology. While the evangelical church looks to the Bible for the materials of its theology, it still depends upon the use of human reason in the interpretation and adjustment of the materials there presented. Especially is this true in the matter of conversion and related doctrines. The language of the Bible is general, rhetorical, theological, practical, or popular, as you may choose to call it, but not strict, philosophical, theoretical, or scientific. The ultimate facts of the doctrine may be perfectly clear to the biblical student, but the adjustment of those facts in a dogmatic system will depend largely upon his ability as a thinker to see in the facts what the biblical writers have not thought fit to utter in express terms, and this upon his mental equipment for his task, or, in other words, upon his knowledge of the constitution and operations of the human mind, within which the process of conversion goes on. The history of Melancthon's “synergism” brings this peculiarity of the subject before us in a very interesting way, for clearer ideas as to the nature of the soul went, in his case, hand in hand with the alterations of the theological system; and thus his efforts to arrive at a statement of the process of conversion which should be at once true to the Scriptures and to the consciousness and the moral necessities of man, are not only interesting as the mental history of a great mind, but throw light upon the interrelations of anthropology and psychology, give us many suggestions as to the interpretation to be put upon the Reformation theology at the present day, and may serve to reveal the lines upon which all progress in respect to these questions is to be sought.

Recent Sources of Information on the Anabaptists in the Netherlands

1917 ◽  
Vol 5 ◽  
pp. 47-71
Author(s):  
Henry Elias Dosker
Keyword(s):  
Sixteenth Century ◽  
The Netherlands ◽  
Sources Of Information ◽  
Low Countries ◽  
Spare Time ◽  
The Reformation ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Subject ◽  
Northeastern Germany

The subject is not of my own choosing. It was assigned to me by our Secretary, when he invited me last summer to write a paper for this meeting of the Society. The raeson for this request lies in the fact that, for the last dozen years, much of my spare time has been spent in special work on this engrossing subject, which is shrouded in much mystery. But we all know something about the great Anabaptist movement, which paralleled the history of the Reformation. We have all touched these Anabaptists in their life and labors, in the sixteenth century, in all Europe, but especially in Switzerland, upper Germany, and Holland. Crushed and practically wiped out everywhere else, they rooted themselves deeply in the soil of northeastern Germany and above all in the Low Countries. And thence, whenever persecution overwhelmed them, they crossed the channel and moved to England, where their history is closely interwoven with that of the Nonconformists in general and especially with the nascent history of the English Baptists.

Practices of Satisfaction, 1215–1700

2004 ◽  
Vol 40 ◽  
pp. 106-118 ◽  
Author(s):  
John Bossy
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Fourteenth Century ◽  
General Public ◽  
Good Deal ◽  
Oxford English Dictionary ◽  
Short History ◽  
The Reformation ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Subject ◽  
Professional Fields

The title, and subject, of this piece is ‘satisfaction’, though its main locus in time is the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. I chose the subject because it fitted in with our president’s preoccupations, and because it interested me; it turns out, to my surprise, to jog our elbow about some contemporary matters, as I guess he wished.We had better start with the word, where there are two distinctions to be considered. The obvious one is between making up for, paying for, making amends, making reparation; and contentment, gratified desire, giving satisfaction, what you can’t get none of. I shall say that the first is the strong meaning, the second the weak one. The first is always other-directed, and entails an offence previously committed; the second is principally self-directed. ‘To content’ is a classical meaning of satisfacere, but it means to content someone else: to do something (facere), as against receiving something. A short history of the word in Latin and English records that the strong meaning emerged into late Latin as a description of church penance, and so passed into English in the fourteenth century. Its heyday was from then until the eighteenth. It referred to ecclesiastical penance (interrupted by the Reformation), the theology of the Redemption (encouraged by the Reformation), and in general public usage to the meeting of any kind of obligation, payment, atonement or compensation. From the eighteenth century it passed from public use, superseded by the weak meaning except in technical or professional fields. One professional usage, to which The Oxford English Dictionary gives a good deal of attention, is ‘to satisfy the examiners’: they think it is a case of ‘content’; may it be a case of ‘avert wrath’?

scholarly journals Postawa chrześcijan Kościoła perskiego w czasie prześladowań Szapura II

Vox Patrum ◽  
2012 ◽  
Vol 57 ◽  
pp. 667-676
Author(s):  
Wojciech Teister ◽  
Andrzej Uciecha
Keyword(s):  
Church History ◽  
External Factors ◽  
Theological Reflection ◽  
Persian Empire ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Subject

The subject of this article deals with Persian Christians in the period of the persecution of Shapur II. The ruler derived from the Sassanid dynasty had gov­erned the Persian Empire since 309 to 379 and on that time of his reign Sassanid Empire saw its first golden era. The three source accounts were analysed: Demonstrations of Aphrahat, The History of the Hermias Sozomenus and Chronica Seertensis – nestorianical source dated from the IX or X century. Each of analysed reports concerning the persecution of the Persian Christians appears to be interesting and noteworthy. In his Church History Hermias accepted the role of external factors in origin and turn of events of Church persecution in Persia in the IV century (magicians and Jews). Nestorian author of Chronica Seertensis has also made observations of these groups in forming the antichristian politics of the Persian ruler but besides that he even expands theological reflection: the persecution should be interpreted as the time of trial, strengthening the faith and calling on to convert. The Aphrahat in his Demonstrations, particularly in his Synodical Letter had briefed the similar historical-redemptive conception in the martyr theology but judging the posture of Simeon negatively.

scholarly journals The Influence of Milan on the Development of the Lombard Koiné in Fifteenth-Century Italy: the Letters of Elisabetta of Pavia

2018 ◽  
Vol 38 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Josh Brown
Keyword(s):  
Fifteenth Century ◽  
Ongoing Debate ◽  
Capital Cities ◽  
Religious Writings ◽  
History Of ◽  
Main Tendency ◽  
The Subject ◽  
Development Of Language ◽  
The One

The main tendency characterizing the development of language in Lombardy in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries is the formation of a koiné. The extent to which Milan influenced the Lombard koiné is the subject of ongoing debate. On the one hand, scholars suggest that Milan provided a centralizing force for the “Milanization” of other Lombard vernaculars, similar to what occurred for Piedmont and the Veneto. On the other hand, studies have pointed out that Milan was not a centralizing force for the Lombard koiné and that it remains to be verified whether the prestige of Milanese influenced non-Milanese vernaculars. This paper looks at the extent to which Milan influenced the koiné in fifteenth-century Lombardy. I consider eight linguistic items, previously described as unique to the vernacular of Pavia, to verify their presence or absence in a corpus of religious writings from the fifteenth-century nun Elisabetta of Pavia and whether Milanese items can be identified. I consider aspects of phonology and morphology in Elisabetta’s letters and conclude that her language is best characterized as a pre-koiné. The article concludes by arguing for less emphasis on the role of Milan in histories of the vernacular in Lombardy. This finding has implications for the history of non-literary writing in northern Italy and the importance attributed to capital cities in processes of koineization.

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