Worship in Medieval and Early Modern Europe

Karin Maag is Director of the H. Henry Meeter Center and associate professor of history at Calvin College.John D. Witvliet is Director of the Calvin Institute of Christian Worship and associate professor of worship and music at Calvin College.

". . . handsomely and carefully produced. . . fascinating." —CatholicBooksReview.org"The authors do a remarkably fine job of taking seriously the continuities between late medieval and early modern practices, especially in the Protestant world. They pay as much attention to subtle transformations of the medieval liturgical inheritance as they do to the dramatic changes in worship initiated by Protestant reforms. The authors also clarify the often murky, dynamic relationship between text and practice, and explain the ways in which practices of worship were rooted in local politics and culture. The primary sources accompanying each essay bring to light liturgical texts that deserve to be better known." —Virginia Reinburg, Boston College"The aim of this collection of essays is to bring . . . a more nuanced approach to the multi-faceted area of worship, in the words of the editors, 'to understand change and continuity in worship practices by describing eleven case studies of liturgical change, accompanied by illustrative source documents. . . anyone with an interest in the development of worship in the late medieval and early modern period will find this an enlightening volume." —Anglican and Episcopal History"Analyzing both departures from and continuity with the medieval heritage, the eleven case studies use a variety of methodologies." —Lutheran Quarterly". . . the essays are uniformly readable and informative. . ." —Books & Culture"The level of scholarship requires some grounding in the political, cultural, theological, and ecclesiastical climate of these times. But anyone with such familiarity will benefit greatly from this inherently interdisciplinary treatment of worship in this period. One can only hope that many of the seminal insights revealed in this tightly argued and thorough collection of essays will find their way into studies of method in liturgical study and in programs for liturgical study." —The Catholic Historical Review"Karin Maag and John Witvliet are to be congratulated for assembling an excellent collection of essays from a wide-ranging group of scholars. By arranging to have these essays published by Notre Dame Press, Maag and Witvliet have reminded us that the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries matter to all Western Christians regardless of our confessional affinities. All of the essays are solid scholarly expositions and provide students and faculty of theological schools and other graduate schools with grist for their own efforts to explore the interplay of continuity and discontinuity in other liturgical aspects of the Reformation." —Anglican Theological Review". . . this book offers depth, in the form of case-studies, and breadth, through its concentrated attention to aspects of worship (such as personal piety or worship in school settings) that often are neglected in traditional liturgical studies. Two particular strengths should be noted. The first is explained. . .Each author gives significant thought to continuity and to change. The other especially attractive feature is the combination of primary sources with commentary." —Theology Today"Offering more than its title suggests, this collection of eleven essays, primary texts, an introduction, and conclusion delves deeply into the transformation of liturgical and other religious practices from the Middle Ages to the early modern era. Focusing on the reformations of the Lutheran, Reformed, Anglican and Catholic confessions, these essays take us from Geneva to Sweden, England, the Low Countries, Spain and the Holy Roman Empire, illustrating the enormous impact of the Reformation on the men and women who experienced, often resisted, and sometimes orchestrated the changes that gave early modern Europe its confessional identities." —Renaissance Quarterly". . . this volume deals with changes in worship, understood as a mixture of theological self-consciousness and cultural forms of expression, from the late medieval to the early modern period. This collection seeks to deepen our understanding of and stimulate new interest in studying worship practices, while helping a wider audience grasp the complex nature of liturgical continuity and change, envision previously unsuspected dimensions of actual liturgical and devotional practice, and dare to enter the emotional world of the sixteenth-century Christian. By making a complex topic accessible to a wider readership, and providing a glimpse into the affective landscape of sixteenth-century Christians, this collection is an important contribution to historical scholarship and provides interesting suggestions for further research." —Sixteenth Century Journal