Der Religionsdisput in Feofan Prokopovyčs Vladimir

Summary Usually Feofan Prokopovyč’s tragedokomedija Vladimir is considered an early example of the author’s ecclesiastical reform concerns, which he realized in the Russian Empire from 1716 onwards. However, a detailed analysis of the religious dispute, which is at the center of the play, and its literary sources gives rise to a more biographical reading, according to which the young author recommended himself to the Kyiv-Mohyla Academy for his work as a professor in rhetoric. He, the former supporter of the Union, emphasizes the Greek roots of Eastern Christianity and presents himself as a loyal representative of Moscow-orientated Orthodoxy. There is no evidence that he disagreed with Hetman Mazepa on the political position of Ukraine at the time.

Group Portraits of Cardinal Bembo and his Friends in the Wake of Trent

Despite being primarily famous as a poet and literary theorist, Pietro Bembo’s visual legacy is dominated by images of him as an aged cardinal. The majority of these images of Cardinal Bembo were produced posthumously, and several representations occur in group portraits including cardinals affiliated with Paul III’s programme of ecclesiastical reform; many of these individuals were Bembo’s closest friends at the papal court. Exploring the important place that Bembo assumed within the Roman Curia during his cardinalate, and his association with the group known as the spirituali, this essay will consider how cardinal portraiture could be used to articulate visually a particular agenda of church reform.

La Basilica di San Miniato al Monte di Firenze (1018-2018)

Between the 11th and the 20th century, the monastery of San Miniato al Monte in Florence played a leading role in the religious and cultural life of the city. The volume analyses for the first time the historical and documentary evolution of this regular institute, famous almost only from the architectural and artistic points of view. The book focuses the period of the bishop’s patronage in the 11th century, when the monastery and some of its members emerged in the context of the ecclesiastical reform, and continues with the study of the the Olivetan monks community, during the 14th-16th centuries, to arrive at the important structural and functional, but also semantic, transformations of the monument between the 18th century and the contemporary times.

Conflicts and Continuity in the Eleventh-Century Religious Reform: The Traditions of San Miniato al Monte in Florence and the Origins of the Benedictine Vallombrosan Order

Studies of the ecclesiastical reform of the eleventh century have often highlighted conflict between reforming monks and simoniac clerics. This was especially true in the urban contexts of Milan and Florence, cities that played a leading role, at the time, in the history of Italian religious life. Through the presentation of an exemplary case study, this paper shows how around an important Florentine monastery, an episcopal foundation, the conflict between ‘conservatives’ and reformers did not obliterate the genesis and permanence of long-term devotional and cultural traditions. Although these traditions emerged in a context of conflict, they were able to overcome it and develop into a new and enduring form of religiosity that lasted from the Romanesque period to the Early Renaissance.

Politics, Society, and Law

From the sixteenth century, the Reformed movement was committed to a programme of social reform in which church and civil authorities worked together in partnership not only in the cause of ecclesiastical reform but with a view to establishing a ‘godly society’ in accordance with the Word of God. Sanctification thus extended to the entire social order, often through appeal to Old Testament ideals and the concept of ‘covenant’. This chapter explores that programme with reference to its democratic impulses, political criticism and concerns for a just legal and economic order. Within the later context of modernity, the Reformed reception of human rights, nationalism, and religious toleration is examined. Finally, the twentieth-century contributions of Abraham Kuyper and Karl Barth are assessed with respect to their relevance for contemporary Reformed social thought.