‘A Generall Reformation of Common Learning’ and its Reception in the English-Speaking World, 1560–1642

Author(s):  
Howard Hotson

This chapter provides a synthesis of the ‘Reformation of Common Learning’, which progressively developed from Peter Ramus’s pedagogy in the mid-sixteenth century to the work of the Moravian Comenius in the mid-seventeenth. The essay stretches the traditional periodisation and disciplinary boundaries often applied to reformation studies. By implication, it calls into question the understanding of a seventeenth-century ‘post-reformation’ era, a point underscored by mid-seventeenth-century writers such as Milton who spoke of reform as a continuous process. The wider intellectual currents that were contemporaneous to sixteenth- and seventeenth-century theological developments become essential to understanding the reception of reformation.

2020 ◽  
Vol 40 (1) ◽  
pp. 5-33
Author(s):  
Gregory D. Dodds

Abstract Henry Care and Roger L’ Estrange fought a bitter battle in the public press in Restoration England. Exploring the ways in which each employed the writings and reputation of Desiderius Erasmus provides insight into the deep fault lines dividing English society in the decade from 1678 to 1688. Their divergent uses of Erasmus demonstrate how late-seventeenth-century interpretations of the early sixteenth-century Reformation became critical points of conflict in the most significant political and religious debates of the period. Paying attention to the reception of Erasmus also helps explain how these two bitter enemies eventually joined William Penn in supporting James II’s Indulgence for Liberty of Conscience.


2011 ◽  
Vol 22 (1) ◽  
pp. 27-35
Author(s):  
Una Canger

AbstractToday a standard has emerged in the English speaking world for writing the language of the Aztecs. According to this standard the phoneme /w/ is written <hu> in the position before a vowel, nahuatl, ahuacatl, ‘avocado.’ An alternative is to write /w/ with <u> (or <v>), a tradition which in the sixteenth century and onwards was common alongside of <hu>. I demonstrate that <hu> misrepresents the pronunciation of the language then and now, and in uncovering its origin, I suggest that Pedro de Gante was the prime promoter of <hu>.


Author(s):  
Robert G. Ingram

Reformation without end reinterprets the English Reformation. No one in eighteenth-century England thought that they lived during ‘the Enlightenment’. Instead, they thought that they still faced the religious, intellectual and political problems unleashed by the Reformation, which began in the sixteenth century. They faced those problems, though, in the aftermath of two bloody seventeenth-century political and religious revolutions. This book is about the ways the eighteenth-century English debated the causes and consequences of those seventeenth-century revolutions. Those living in post-revolutionary England conceived themselves as living in the midst of the very thing which they thought had caused the revolutions: the Reformation. The reasons for and the legacy of the Reformation remained hotly debated in post-revolutionary England because the religious and political issues it had generated remained unresolved and that irresolution threatened more civil unrest. For this reason, most that got published during the eighteenth century concerned religion. This book looks closely at the careers of four of the eighteenth century’s most important polemical divines, Daniel Waterland, Conyers Middleton, Zachary Grey and William Warburton. It relies on a wide range of manuscript sources, including annotated books and unpublished drafts, to show how eighteenth-century authors crafted and pitched their works.


2009 ◽  
Vol 36 (144) ◽  
pp. 598-603 ◽  
Author(s):  
Raymond Gillespie

The Reformation in Ireland has never lacked chroniclers, defenders and detractors. The reason for this is not hard to discern. The older literature that grappled with the processes of religious change in sixteenth and seventeenth-century Ireland was based on a number of well-recognised and widely agreed propositions. The first of these was that confessional and political positions were inextricably linked, and the fate of one served not only as a proxy for the other but as an explanation for the trajectory of change; thus, to explain the failure of the reform process to strike deep roots in sixteenth-century Ireland, one had only to invoke the failure of the Tudor conquest.


Author(s):  
Kenneth Austin

This book examines the attitudes of various Christian groups in the Protestant and Catholic Reformations towards Jews, the Hebrew language, and Jewish learning. Martin Luther's writings are notorious, but Reformation attitudes were much more varied and nuanced than these might lead us to believe. The book has much to tell us about the Reformation and its priorities, and it has important implications for how we think about religious pluralism more broadly. The book begins by focusing on the impact and various forms of the Reformation on the Jews and pays close attention to the global perspective on Jewish experiences in the early modern period. It highlights the links between Jews in Europe and those in north Africa, Asia Minor, and the Americas, and it looks into the Jews' migrations and reputation as a corollary of Christians' exploration and colonisation of several territories. It seeks to next establish the position Jews occupied in Christian thinking and society by the start of the Reformation era, and then moves on to the first waves of reform in the earliest decades of the sixteenth century in both the Catholic and Protestant realms. The book explores the radical dimension to the Protestant Reformation and talks about identity as the heart of a fundamental issue associated with the Reformation. It analyzes “Counter Reformation” and discusses the various forms of Protestantism that had been accepted by large swathes of the population of many territories in Europe. Later chapters turn attention to relations between Jews and Christians in the first half of the seventeenth century and explore the Sabbatean movement as the most significant messianic movement since the first century BCE. In conclusion, the book summarizes how the Jews of Europe were in a very different position by the end of the seventeenth century compared to where they had been at the start of the sixteenth century. It recounts how Jewish communities sprung up in places which had not traditionally been a home to Jews, especially in Eastern Europe.


Author(s):  
Michael J. Lynch

This chapter, continuing the historical survey of the previous chapter, slows down and focuses on the reception of the so-called Lombardian formula in the Reformation and early Post-Reformation period, especially among the Reformed churches. After looking at how well-known Reformers such as Martin Luther, John Calvin, and Zachary Ursinus understood the Lombardian formula, concentration shifts to a few critical events that provide important background to the Synod of Dordt and intra-Reformed debates on the extent of the atonement. More specifically, the chapter covers a late sixteenth-century debate between the Lutheran Jacob Andreae and the Reformed theologian Theodore Beza on the extent of Christ’s work. Next, it looks at the back-and-forth between Jacob Arminius and William Perkins. Finally, it gives a thorough examination of the Hague Conference of 1611, which featured a discussion of the various doctrines of grace among the Remonstrants and Contra-Remonstrants.


2017 ◽  
Vol 60 (4) ◽  
pp. 865-887 ◽  
Author(s):  
JASMINE KILBURN-TOPPIN

AbstractThis article reconsiders the gift within London's sixteenth- and early seventeenth-century livery companies. Previous research into guild gift-giving cultures has focused exclusively upon substantial bequests of money and property by mercantile elites to the ‘great twelve’ livery companies. Through charitable gifts, citizens established godly reputations and legacies, perpetuated through the guild institution. It is argued here that a rich culture of material gift-giving, hitherto overlooked by historians, also thrived within London's craft guilds. Drawing on company gift books, inventories, and material survivals from guild collections, this article examines typologies of donors and gifts, the anticipated ‘returns’ on the gift by the recipient company, and the ideal spatial and temporal contexts for gift-giving. This material approach reveals that master artisans negotiated civic status, authority, and memory through the presentation of a wide range of gifted artefacts for display and ritual use in London's livery halls. Moreover, this culture of gift-giving was so deep-rooted and significant that it survived the Reformation upheavals largely intact. Finally, the embellishment of rituals of gifting, and the synchronization of gifting and feasting rites from the second half of the sixteenth century, are further evidence for the resurgence of English civic culture in this era.


2015 ◽  
Vol 56 (1) ◽  
pp. 3-37 ◽  
Author(s):  
Marta Hulková

Tablature notations that developed in the sixteenth century in the field of secular European instrumental music had an impact also on the dissemination of purely vocal and vocal-instrumental church music. In this function, the so-called new German organ tablature notation (also known as Ammerbach’s notation) became the most prominent, enabling organists to produce intabulations from the vocal and vocal-instrumental parts of sacred compositions. On the choir of the Lutheran church in Levoča, as parts of the Leutschau/Lőcse/Levoča Music Collection, six tablature books written in Ammerbach’s notation have been preserved. They are associated with Johann Plotz, Ján Šimbracký, and Samuel Marckfelner, local organists active in Zips during the seventeenth century. The tablature books contain a repertoire which shows that the scribes had a good knowledge of contemporaneous Protestant church music performed in Central Europe, as well as works by Renaissance masters active in Catholic environment during the second half of the sixteenth century. The books contain intabulations of the works by local seventeenth-century musicians, as well as several pieces by Jacob Regnart, Matthäus von Löwenstern, Fabianus Ripanus, etc. The tablatures are often the only usable source for the reconstruction of sixteenth- and seventeenth-century polyphonic compositions transmitted incompletely.


1988 ◽  
Vol 39 (4) ◽  
pp. 557-572
Author(s):  
Tom Scott

As the quincentenary of Miintzer's birth looms ominously in 1989, the manufactories of research are already working overtime. After the spate of publications on the Peasants' War in 1975 a lull in production set in, with the market subsequently depressed by severe competition from the Luther anniversary in 1983. Now the Müntzer industry has once again picked up, but the models coming off the production line bear little resemblance to the crude and garish stereotypes of yesteryear. At last a saner image of Müntzer is being shaped by means of the tools of sounder source editions, greater theological insight and a firmer chronology of life and work. In this enterprise scholars from the English-speaking world, to whom Müntzer has often seemed an incomprehensible figure on the margins of the Reformation, are taking full and vigorous part. Their contribution is assessed at the conclusion of this review, which concentrates perforce on the most significant German publications of the last two decades.


Author(s):  
Andrew Hadfield

Advances in technology had dramatically improved mapping and navigational possibilities that made travel within Europe easier, more comfortable, and more feasible. In the early seventeenth century, writers such as Fynes Moryson, Thomas Coryat, and William Lithgow began to provide accounts of their extensive travels. However, the ethnological models that were used by Europeans in the sixteenth century were hardly modern. While the discovery of the New World showed the scope and diversity of the known universe, it also encouraged a heightened xenophobia and racism. There are also other more practical considerations implying that change was not as rapid as might be expected. This article examines travel in the context of cultural history and how the Reformation became a key impediment to travel. It looks at travelers who were prepared to go beyond what was generally expected or even acceptable despite the obvious dangers and discomforts, focusing on the experiences of Margery Kempe and William Lithgow.


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