scholarly journals The Reformation as a Process of Transformation

2021 ◽  
Vol 54 (1) ◽  
pp. 19-29
Author(s):  
Volker Leppin
Keyword(s):  
Middle Ages ◽  
Historical Period ◽  
Sociological Perspective ◽  
Late Middle Ages ◽  
The Reformation

The Reformation is described mostly as an upheaval. In fact, it is worth considering this period as transformation. The article is an attempt to modify the usual perception of this historical period. At the very beginning the paper discusses the idea of transformation from a sociological perspective. Then it introduces a comparison of the Reformation with other transitions and the late Middle Ages. This allows at the end to define the Reformation as a kind of consequence of medieval times and their transformation.

Comparative Politics of Exclusion in Europe and the Americas: Religious, Sectarian, and Racial Boundary Making since the Reformation

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Şener Aktürk
Keyword(s):  
Middle Ages ◽  
Comparative Politics ◽  
Critical Reading ◽  
Religious Groups ◽  
Elective Affinity ◽  
Late Middle Ages ◽  
The Reformation ◽  
Boundary Making ◽  
Nineteenth And Twentieth Centuries ◽  
Pope Innocent Iii

Based on a critical reading of three recent books, I argue that the exclusion of Jews and Muslims, the two major non-Christian religious groups in Europe and the Americas, has continued on the basis of ethnic, racial, ideological, and quasi-rational justifications, instead of or in addition to religious justifications, since the Reformation. Furthermore, I argue that the institutionally orchestrated collective stigmatization and persecution of Jews and Muslims predated the Reformation, going back to the Fourth Lateran Council under Pope Innocent III in 1215. The notion of Corpus Christianum and Observant movements in the late Middle Ages, the elective affinity of liberalism and racism in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, and the divergence in religious norms at present are critically evaluated as potential causes of ethnoreligious exclusion.

„Im Namen Gottes des Allmächtigen!“

2016 ◽  
Vol 102 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Christoph Winzeler
Keyword(s):  
Middle Ages ◽  
21St Century ◽  
Constitutional Law ◽  
16Th Century ◽  
Religious Discrimination ◽  
Late Middle Ages ◽  
Federal Constitution ◽  
The Reformation ◽  
Swiss Confederation ◽  
The 19Th Century

Abstract„In the Name of God the Almighty!“, Swiss constitutional law on religions - balancing and apeacing in historic tradition. From the 16th century onwards, the Reformation and its consequences have influenced the development of the Swiss Confederation. During the late Middle Ages, the Confederation had been struggling to find its way as a system of treaties within a growing number of Cantons. The Reformation divided the Cantons in two ‚camps‘, both trying to defeat each other on the battlefield, which resulted in four successive Peace Treaties (‚Landfriedensbünde‘). 1847 there was a last civil war between the conservative or catholic ‚camp‘ and the liberal or protestant majority. From 1848 until 1973, the Federal Constitution contained discriminations against catholics, including a probihition of the Jesuits. In 2009, under changed circumstances, a new religious discrimination was introduced into the Constitution: the ban on minarets. Islam is now making a way through Swiss history comparable to that of Catholicism in the 19th century. Yet the law of the Cantons, developed over the centuries, provides for adequate instruments to cope with the challenges of the 21st century.

Observant Reform in the Late Middle Ages

2020 ◽  
pp. 299-313
Author(s):  
Kathryne Beebe
Keyword(s):  
Middle Ages ◽  
Religious Movements ◽  
Cultural Economic ◽  
Late Medieval ◽  
The Past ◽  
Late Middle Ages ◽  
Medieval Europe ◽  
The Reformation ◽  
Essential Questions ◽  
Scant Attention

Observant reform is central to the religious, social, cultural, economic, and political changes fundamental to late medieval Europe. However, modern scholars have traditionally devoted scant attention to it, focusing instead on pre-1300 religious movements or the changes of the Reformation. Yet in the past two decades, more work focusing on the ‘Observance Movement’ has begun to remedy that neglect. This chapter highlights the essential questions and issues that drive recent studies, such as property, the involvement of women and the laity, and resistance to reform. It evaluates the current challenges presented by the conceptualization of an emerging field and argues that while greater collaboration between scholars and the production of basic overviews are needed, we should also strive to understand those who professed or embodied Observant ideals not just from the viewpoint of our own labels and concepts, but also to understand them in their own terms.

The Bible in the Fourteenth Century: Some Observations

1985 ◽  
Vol 54 (2) ◽  
pp. 176-187 ◽  
Author(s):  
William J. Courtenay
Keyword(s):  
Middle Ages ◽  
Fourteenth Century ◽  
Biblical Studies ◽  
The Bible ◽  
Late Medieval Period ◽  
Late Middle Ages ◽  
Precise Understanding ◽  
The Reformation ◽  
Biblical Commentaries ◽  
English Group

One of the most pressing needs in the field of medieval biblical studies is for an adequate historical overview of developments in the late Middle Ages. One of the pioneers, the late Beryl Smalley, never fully achieved the intended sequel to her magisterial Study of the Bible in the Middle Ages, although her English Friars and Antiquity was an excellent beginning, particularly for the early fourteenth-century English group. Other surveys end with Nicholas of Lyra, skip from the thirteenth century to the Reformation, or give only the most cursory attention to the late medieval period.2 And yet the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries were rich in biblical commentaries, and scholars, have long considered a more precise understanding of developments in that period to be essential for an adequate appreciation of the character and significance of biblical commentaries in the early sixteenth century.

scholarly journals Ornamental Mace as a Strike Weapon and Symbol of Power of a Military Commander of the Tian Shan Kyrgyz

2019 ◽  
Vol 18 (3) ◽  
pp. 137-145
Author(s):  
Yu. S. Khudyakov ◽  
K. T. Akmatov
Keyword(s):  
Middle Ages ◽  
Historical Period ◽  
Saint Petersburg ◽  
Military Commander ◽  
Late Middle Ages ◽  
Military Commanders ◽  
Different Types ◽  
History Of ◽  
Tian Shan ◽  
New Time

Purpose. We analyzed an extremely rare finding of a mace with a small ornamental iron battle top fastened to a long wooden handle. This mace is a part of a collection of armament objects acquired by museum workers in the course of expeditions on the territory of Kyrgyzstan over the past decades. At present, this collection is stored in the Russian Museum of Ethnography in Saint Petersburg. During the previous historical period, when museum workers had been searching and gathering objects of traditional culture of different peoples on the territory of Central Asia, that finding was acquired together with other characteristic objects of traditional cultures from that region on the territory of Kyrgyzstan. Firstly, it was stored in the Museum of the Peoples of the USSR. We aimed at dating the artifact and identifying its purpose. Conclusion. We traced primary events in the history of studying different types of close combat strike weapons which were used by Kyrgyz warriors in Tian Shan during the Late Middle Ages and New Time. A result of the research conducted is a description of the ornamental iron battle top and the wooden handle of this mace decorated with carved rhomb ornaments. We date the artifact as belonging to the period of Late Middle Ages – New Time. According to the terms used for such types of weapons, the mace could have been used as a striking weapon; however, it its ornamental battle top is of a smaller size than that of traditional maces, so it could have been used as a symbol of power. Results. We conclude that this mace could have been a strike weapon in the course of close and hand-to-hand combats led by Kyrgyz warriors, but also it could have been used as a symbol of power by military commanders of the Kyrgyz forces.

The Immoralities of the Patriarchs according to the Exegesis of the Late Middle Ages and of the Reformation

1930 ◽  
Vol 23 (1) ◽  
pp. 39-49 ◽  
Author(s):  
Roland H. Bainton
Keyword(s):  
Middle Ages ◽  
Old Testament ◽  
Christian Ethics ◽  
The Sun ◽  
Christian Church ◽  
Late Middle Ages ◽  
The Reformation ◽  
Penitential Psalms

The Old Testament has always been something of an embarrassment to the Christian church. The book was Scripture and its heroes were to be taken as examples. Nevertheless there was much in their conduct which ran counter to the prevailing Christian ethics. A problem thus arose both in exegesis and in ethics. Were the patriarchs to be justified? Should they be imitated? Marcion evaded the difficulty by simply rejecting the Old Testament, pointing out the complete antithesis, for example, between the precept, “Let not the sun go down upon your wrath,” and the conduct of Joshua, who kept the sun up till his wrath went down. In the main the fathers resolved such difficulties by allegory, but even this key did not suffice. There was no denying that Moses really slew the Egyptian, that the Israelites robbed them, that Abraham lied, that Jacob was polygamous, and that Samson committed suicide, not to mention the deeds which made it appropriate to attribute to David the penitential psalms. Origen, the prince of allegorists, admitted that the incest of Lot and the polygamy of Abraham and Jacob were “mysteries not understood by us.”

A Singular Example of the Wrath of God: The Use of Sodom in Sixteenth-Century Exegesis

2005 ◽  
Vol 98 (1) ◽  
pp. 67-93 ◽  
Author(s):  
Christopher Elwood
Keyword(s):  
Sixteenth Century ◽  
Middle Ages ◽  
Late Antiquity ◽  
Public Discourse ◽  
The Public ◽  
Late Middle Ages ◽  
Wide Range ◽  
The Reformation ◽  
History Of ◽  
Wrath Of God

What did the Reformation do for sodomy? The more or less established view, developed by social and cultural historians and contributors to the history of sexuality, is that it did relatively little. The evidence of the normative discourses of theology and law suggests that definitions and understandings of sodomy after the Reformation movements of the early and middle sixteenth century differed little from what had been proffered in the legal and moral writings of the medieval period. According to these defi nitions, which varied in their particulars, sodomy was a sin of unnatural lust which included, but was often not limited to, sexual contact between persons of the same sex. It was a sin whose origins could be traced to the biblical cities of Sodom and Gomorrah, whose inhabitants' penchant for unnatural sex led directly to their destruction in a hail of sulfur and fire—a dramatic event that was to stand as a warning both to those tempted to indulge in this vice and to those innocent of that particular sin who would nonetheless tolerate it in their neighbors. This view is found reflected in a wide range of writings from homiletic, exegetical, and penitential productions of late antiquity and the early, high, and late Middle Ages. And, indeed, while Protestant reforming ideas and practices changed many things in Europe of the sixteenth century, they seem to have left untouched this conception of the sin of the Sodomites. Confessions divided on many theological issues appear to have had no quarrel over what sodomy was, where it had come from, and what ought to be done about it. Definitions, then, remained more or less the same through the course of the Reformations; what changed was the capacity of local and regional jurisdictions to enforce legal proscriptions. And so, if the Reformation movements had any impact on the public discourse on sodomy, that impact was limited to the contribution the reforms made to the development of instruments of moral discipline and their facilitation (in some instances) of harsher responses to persons accused and convicted of the crime of sodomy.

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