Erasmus the Theologian

2016 ◽  
Vol 96 (4) ◽  
pp. 498-515
Author(s):  
Greta Grace Kroeker
Keyword(s):  
Sixteenth Century ◽  
Early Years ◽  
The Reformation

Erasmus of Rotterdam developed from a classical humanist to a Christian humanist theologian in the first two decades of the sixteenth century. In the early years of the Reformation, his theological work responded to the theological debates of the age. Although many contemporaries dismissed him as a theologian, he developed a mature theology of grace before his death in 1536 that evidenced his efforts to create space for theological compromise between Protestants and Catholics and prevent the permanent fissure of western Christianity.

Hurrell Froude and the Reformers

1970 ◽  
Vol 21 (3) ◽  
pp. 243-259 ◽  
Author(s):  
William J. Baker
Keyword(s):  
Sixteenth Century ◽  
Church And State ◽  
Early Years ◽  
Church Of Christ ◽  
Protestant Reformation ◽  
The Reformation ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Subject ◽  
William Cobbett ◽  
The Church

‘No portion of our annals’, Macaulay wrote in 1828, ‘has been more perplexed and misrepresented by writers of different parties than the history of the Reformation’. In the early years of the nineteenth century, when polemicists turned to history more often than to philosophy or theology, the Reformation was the subject most littered with the pamphlets of partisan debate. Macaulay could have cited numerous examples. Joseph Milner's popular History of the Church of Christ (1794–1809) set the Reformation in sharp contrast to the ‘Dark Ages’ when only occasional gleams of evangelical light could be detected, thus providing the Evangelical party with a historic lineage; Robert Sou they, in his Book of the Church (1824), presented a lightly-veiled argument for the retention of the existing order of Church and State as established in the sixteenth century; and in 1824 William Cobbett began the first of his sixteen weekly instalments on a history of the Protestant Reformation in England and Ireland, in order to call attention to the plight of labourers in the British Isles. In the history of the Reformation, duly manipulated (‘rightly interpreted’), men found precedents for their own positions and refutation of their opponents' arguments.

The Irish Student Diaspora in the Sixteenth Century and the Early Years of the Irish College at Salamanca

1978 ◽  
Vol 14 (3) ◽  
pp. 242-260
Author(s):  
Gary Mooney
Keyword(s):  
Sixteenth Century ◽  
Early Years ◽  
National Language ◽  
Irish College ◽  
The People ◽  
Head Of State ◽  
Counter Reformation ◽  
The Reformation ◽  
The Will

‘Ireland was the only country where the Counter-Reformation succeeded against the will of the head of state.’ Why was this? Obviously, the English Government's neglect of education and the Catholic clergy's awareness of its importance was one reason. Obviously, too, the Counter-Reformation got under way in Ireland before the Reformation made a religious impact. Again, the quality of the reformed clergy sent to Ireland was poor and they made little effort to learn Gaelic or to translate the scriptures into the national language until very late in the century. But perhaps most important of all is the fact that in Gaelic Ireland the Reformation was inextricably linked with the expropriation of lands and the abolition of traditional rights and customs. Hence, defence of one's land and of one's religion became so intertwined as to be almost inseparable; and this, I suspect, rather than any appreciation of theological distinctions, was decisive. A number of the clergy of the Counter-Reformation, most of them educated in the Irish colleges on the Continent, were at pains not only to underline the ‘heresies’ in the new teaching and to instruct the people in the spirit of Tridentine Catholicism, but also to link the struggle against the ‘gall’, the English conqueror, with the European religious struggle.

A Reappraisal of William Tyndale's Debt to Martin Luther

1962 ◽  
Vol 31 (1) ◽  
pp. 24-45 ◽  
Author(s):  
L. J. Trinterud
Keyword(s):  
Sixteenth Century ◽  
Martin Luther ◽  
Early Years ◽  
Careful Study ◽  
English Reformation ◽  
Christian Humanism ◽  
The Bible ◽  
The Reformation ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Common

The colorful and powerful figure of Martin Luther dominates all study of the early years of the Reformation. Inevitably the first pages of the history of the Reformation in any region will begin with an effort by the author to trace the manner in which Luther's influence reached that area. In the study of the English Reformation one of the common ways of showing Luther's influence is to point to the work of the Bible translator William Tyndale. Numerous books on the English Reformation, on the history of the English Bible, and on Tyndale himself, have made of him a follower and an interpreter of Luther who played a major role in introducing the thought of the great reformer into England. A careful study of Tyndale's works, however, will show that his debt to Luther, and the “Lutheranism” of his views, has been over-stated. Tyndale, like many early sixteenth century religious reformers, made much use of Luther's name, fame, and works but without becoming a follower of those distinctive ideas of the German reformer which set him off from the other advocates of reform at the time. Tyndale's greatest debt was first to Christian humanism and then to the German-Swiss reformers of Zurich and Basel.

Once Again, The Case of Richard Hunne

1969 ◽  
Vol 1 (1) ◽  
pp. 19-29 ◽  
Author(s):  
Gordon K. McBride
Keyword(s):  
Sixteenth Century ◽  
Focal Point ◽  
Source Material ◽  
Early Years ◽  
The Other ◽  
Thomas More ◽  
Royal Court ◽  
The Reformation ◽  
Sir Thomas More ◽  
Historical Controversy

On the morning of 4 December 1514, a certain London merchant-tailor, Richard Hunne by name, was found hanging in his cell in the Lollards' Tower at St. Paul's. On the surface this event might seem to be of little concern to anyone except Hunne. However, the death of this moderately well-to-do London businessman became caught up in the agitation against the clergy which presaged the Reformation in England. Indeed, Richard Hunne's case has become, as well, the focal point of a major and long-lasting historical controversy over the responsibility for Hunne's death. This controversy arises out of contradictory and confusing reports of the circumstances surrounding the event and the peculiar actions of the authorities, both royal and clerical, over an attempt to fix the responsibility for the death. One major body of source material, particularly the writings of Sir Thomas More, holds that Hunne had committed suicide and is supported by the decision of a royal court which found those accused of Hunne's death to be innocent. The other, which includes several Protestant chroniclers and writers, holds that Hunne was murdered by the ecclesiastical authorities of London and is supported by depositions from a coroner's inquest into the matter.The alleged facts of Hunne's death, minor event though it may have been, served to fan a wave of excitement in London, particularly since the event fell upon thoroughly receptive ears. The current anticlericalism received a major stimulus from Hunne's death.It is difficult to document the extent to which anticlericalism was present in London, let alone England at large, in the early years of the sixteenth century, but there was a dispute between the parishioners of London and their rectors over such matters as tithes, offerings and mortuary fees.3 In addition there had been some action, in an official sense, against the greatly abused benefit of clergy.

Broken Promises and the Rise of a Stereotype

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Koji Yamamoto
Keyword(s):  
Social Psychology ◽  
Sixteenth Century ◽  
Public Service ◽  
Political History ◽  
Negative Image ◽  
The Poor ◽  
The Social ◽  
The Reformation ◽  
Balance Of Trade

Projects began to emerge during the sixteenth century en masse by promising to relieve the poor, improve the balance of trade, raise money for the Crown, and thereby push England’s imperial ambitions abroad. Yet such promises were often too good to be true. This chapter explores how the ‘reformation of abuses’—a fateful slogan associated with England’s break from Rome—came to be used widely in economic contexts, and undermined promised public service under Elizabeth and the early Stuarts. The negative image of the projector soon emerged in response, reaching both upper and lower echelons of society. The chapter reconstructs the social circulation of distrust under Charles, and considers its repercussions. To do this it brings conceptual tools developed in social psychology and sociology to bear upon sources conventionally studied in literary and political history.

‘The healthe of my soule’

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Nicola Clark
Keyword(s):  
Sixteenth Century ◽  
Early Stage ◽  
The Reformation ◽  
The Family ◽  
Kinship Relations ◽  
Royal Supremacy ◽  
The Church

Throughout the sixteenth century and beyond, the Howards are usually described as religiously ‘conservative’, resisting the reformist impulse of the Reformation while conforming to the royal supremacy over the Church. The women of the family have played little part in this characterization, yet they too lived through the earliest stages of the Reformation. This chapter shows that what we see is not a family following the lead of its patriarch in religious matters at this early stage of the Reformation, but that this did not stop them maintaining strong kinship relations across the shifting religious spectrum.

Communicatio Idiomatum

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Richard Cross
Keyword(s):  
Sixteenth Century ◽  
Human Nature ◽  
Close Attention ◽  
Divine Attributes ◽  
Son Of God ◽  
Comprehensive Account ◽  
Highly Sensitive ◽  
The Reformation ◽  
Communicatio Idiomatum

This book offers a radical reinterpretation of the sixteenth-century Christological debates between Lutheran and Reformed theologians on the ascription of divine and human predicates to the person of the incarnate Son of God (the communicatio idiomatum). It does so by close attention to the arguments deployed by the protagonists in the discussion, and to the theologians’ metaphysical and semantic assumptions, explicit and implicit. It traces the central contours of the Christological debates, from the discussion between Luther and Zwingli in the 1520s to the Colloquy of Montbéliard in 1586. The book shows that Luther’s Christology is thoroughly Medieval, and that innovations usually associated with Luther—in particular, that Christ’s human nature comes to share in divine attributes—should be ascribed instead to his younger contemporary Johannes Brenz. The discussion is highly sensitive to the differences between the various Luther groups—followers of Brenz, and the different factions aligned in varying ways with Melanchthon—and to the differences between all of these and the Reformed theologians. And by locating the Christological discussions in their immediate Medieval background, the book also provides a comprehensive account of the continuities and discontinuities between the two eras. In these ways, it is shown that the standard interpretations of the Reformation debates on the matter are almost wholly mistaken.

scholarly journals ERASMUS AND JUAN LUIS VIVES ON RHETORICAL DECORUM AND POLITICS

2021 ◽  
pp. 1-22
Author(s):  
KAARLO HAVU
Keyword(s):  
Sixteenth Century ◽  
Political Rhetoric ◽  
Rhetorical Theory ◽  
History Of Rhetoric ◽  
Rhetorical Situation ◽  
Internal Development ◽  
Close Analysis ◽  
The Reformation ◽  
History Of

Abstract The article analyses the emergence of decorum (appropriateness) as a central concept of rhetorical theory in the early sixteenth-century writings of Erasmus and Juan Luis Vives. In rhetorical theory, decorum shifted the emphasis from formulaic rules to their creative application in concrete cases. In doing so, it emphasized a close analysis of the rhetorical situation (above all the preferences of the audience) and underscored the persuasive possibilities of civil conversation as opposed to passionate, adversarial rhetoric. The article argues that the stress put on decorum in early sixteenth-century theory is not just an internal development in the history of rhetoric but linked to far wider questions concerning the role of rhetoric in religious and secular lives. Decorum appears as a solution both to the divisiveness of language in the context of the Reformation and dynastic warfare of the early sixteenth century and as an adaptation of the republican tradition of political rhetoric to a changed, monarchical context. Erasmus and Vives maintained that decorum not only suppressed destructive passions and discord, but that it was only through polite and civil rhetoric (or conversation) that a truly effective persuasion was possible in a vast array of contexts.

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