Philip M. Soergel - Böcker

The wonder book was a new genre that appeared in the troubled years following Luther's death in 1546 and the outbreak of religious wars at mid century. Originally conceived as a kind of apocalyptic text intended to interpret the ''signs of the times'' during this uncertain period, these books were filled with accounts of celestial visions, comets, natural disasters, monstrous births, and other seeming signs and portents, events in which the hand of God was revealed. As the genre developed, Philip Soergel shows, its authors, mostly Lutheran divines, came increasingly to delve into the theology of miracles and the supernatural. Writing for a mostly clerical audience, they hoped to encourage the broad revival of a sense of divine presence in everyday life. Thus, in contrast to generations of scholars who have assumed that the Reformation represented a vital step on the way to the ''disenchantment of the world,'' Soergel's groundbreaking study reveals that German evangelicals were themselves active enchanters.

At the close of the sixteenth century, despite Protestant attempts to discourage popular devotion to saints and shrines, the Roman Church in Bavaria initiated a propagandistic campaign through the publishing of pilgrimage books and pamphlets. Philip Soergel's cogent exploration of this little-known pilgrimage literature yields a vivid portrait of religion before, during, and after the Reformation and Counter-Reformation. These "advertisements," combining testimonies of miracles with fantastic legends about shrines, fueled the conflict between Catholics and Protestants and helped shape a distinctive Catholic historical consciousness. Soergel stresses the power of the printed word as a defense of traditional authority, testing other historians' assertions about the neglect of printing and literacy in the Counter-Reformation. This title is part of UC Press's Voices Revived program, which commemorates University of California Press’s mission to seek out and cultivate the brightest minds and give them voice, reach, and impact. Drawing on a backlist dating to 1893, Voices Revived makes high-quality, peer-reviewed scholarship accessible once again using print-on-demand technology. This title was originally published in 1993.