Brill's Series in Church History – Serie

Lay prophets in Lutheran Europe (c. 1550–1700) is the first transnational study of the phenomenon of angelic apparitions in all Lutheran cultures of early modern Europe. Jürgen Beyer provides evidence for more than 350 cases and analyses the material in various ways: tracing the medieval origins, studying the spread of news about prophets, looking at the performances legitimising their calling, noting their comments on local politics, following the theological debates about prophets, and interpreting the early modern notions of holiness within which prophets operated. A full chronology and bibliography of all cases concludes the volume. Beyer demonstrates that lay prophets were an accepted part of Lutheran culture and places them in their social, political and confessional contexts.

This book makes a contribution to knowledge of the history of the Augustinian canons in England through a case study of one particular house in the south-west of the country. Plympton Priory in Devon was founded in 1121 by a bishop of Exeter, and through episcopal and lay donations of temporal and spiritual sources of income became one of the wealthiest houses of Augustinian canons in England. Analysis of surviving records reveals the multiplicity of connections existing between the canons and the laity, the secular clergy, the episcopacy, and the Crown until the priory’s dissolution. The result is a multi-faceted study of the roles played by an Augustinian house in society and within the Church in the late Middle Ages.

The keywords migration, elite, and confession that form the leitmotiv of this book allow a focus on major subjects of research in early modern history. Concentrating on subjects relevant to the history of education, the essays collected here offer manifold insights into new source material and the evaluation of methods. The fifteen papers cover a wide range of topics related to the education of academic theologians and clergy in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. As training programmes differed from university to university, this gave rise to migration and an extensive communicative network. Although a final conclusion of methodological questions requires more research, the volume provides an important contribution to the interdisciplinary discussion between representatives of the many historical disciplines.The fifteen contributors: Luca Baschera, Amy Nelson Burnett, Otfried Czaika, Simone Giese, Anja-Silvia Göing, Leonhard Hell, Wim Janse, Julian Kümmerle, Andreas Mühling, Hans Peterse, Frank van der Pol, Sünje Prühlen, Alexander Schunka, Sven Tode, and Jason Zuidema.

Models of Charitable Care analyses the practice of Catholic nuns in Amsterdam in the 19th and 20th century. Attention is paid to the ambiguous ascetic spiritual discourse that underpinned their work: it encouraged charity as solidarity with strangers, but caused intense emotional distance too. Historiography is mainly manufactured by religious and lay academics who shared the congregational perspective and presented fairly positive evaluations. Criticism from within, however, is voiced by care leavers who grew up in homes ran by religious. Some are grateful, others bitter. The sisters were living models who combined an anti-worldly outlook with a practical concern for vulnerable creatures. Relating various theoretical interpretations, a typology of three models is developed with ‘agency’ as the differentiating criterion.

For a long time it was thought that there were no Middle Dutch sermons dating from the thirteenth century. It was only after J.P. Gumbert had redated the manuscript from The Hague containing the Limburg Sermons that its contents could be assigned to that century. Most of the Limburg Sermons appear to be translations of the Middle High German St. Georgen sermons. But sixteen of these texts are known only in Middle Dutch, and among these is to be found material drawn from the works of Hadewijch and Beatrijs van Nazareth. Thus the Limburg Sermons emerge to take their place in the famous tradition of Brabantine mysticism.

For centuries, the relation between lay piety and academic theology has determined the faith of lay people as well as developments in theology, and influenced daily life as well as scholarly discussions. In this book an international and multidisciplinary panel of specialists, covering the fields of church history, history of literature, music history, book history, and art history reflects on a broad range of research topics, providing a fascinating and refreshing view on what this relation has been throughout the centuries.Christoph Burger has given a major impulse to the research into the history of theology, notably the issue of adapting academic theology for lay people. The contributions to this Festschrift reflect this broad spectrum of correlations between learned theology and lay piety from the Early Church period until modern times. The book contains contributions to the research on lay piety as well as academic theology in the Middle Ages, Reformation, and the modern period, as well as their representations in such media as printed books and woodcuts. The result is a truly epoch-transcending and interdisciplinary volume.

In the past two decades, scholarship in the Humanities and in the Social Sciences has witnessed the synchronic and often tangled rise of Ritual and Performance Studies. This interdisciplinary collection of essays in disciplines ranging from Theology to Antropology to Business Administration offers an insightful guide to assumptions, approaches and methods that underpin much of cutting-edge research in the field, with the help of case-studies spanning four continents and covering a long-haul period from the High Middle Ages to the Present.

The contemporary Russian Orthodox Church (ROC) is in a paradoxical situation: On all levels of Church life, new practices and concepts are considered to belong to Orthodox tradition, yet at the same time Orthodoxy is regarded as the most “unchangeable” and normative of the Christian confessions. So what makes tradition? The nineteen contributions in this volume examine the ambiguities and complexities created by the dynamic between tradition and innovation within the ROC in relation to the fundamental tenets of Orthodoxy. By this focus, the volume offers new insights and highlights the question how to define (Orthodox) Tradition. It addresses “unorthodox” topics of Orthodox paradoxes.Contributors include: Tatiana Artemyeva, Alexei Beglov, Wil van den Bercken, Per-Arne Bodin, Page Herrlinger, Nadieszda Kizenko, Anastasia Mitrofanova, Stella Rock, and Alexander Verkhovsky.

What is the base of religious leadership and how has it changed over the centuries? This volume presents a range of actors, both men and women, who, in a variety of historical contexts, claimed to be the living voices or intermediaries of God. The essays analyse the foundation of their authoritative claims and ask how and how far they succeeded in securing obedience from the Christians to whom they addressed their message. Religious authority is not understood as a monolithic entity but as something derived from many sources and claims. Whatever the national background, whether ordained or supposedly appointed through divine intervention, the histories of the people portrayed underline the long-term manifestations and multifaceted nature of Christian identity.

In Augustine’s Cyprian Matthew Gaumer retraces how Augustine of Hippo devised the ultimate strategy to suppress Donatist Christianity, an indigenous form of the religion in ancient North Africa. Spanning nearly forty years, Augustine’s entire clerical career was spent combating the Donatists and seeking the dominance of the Catholic Church in North Africa. Through a variety of approaches Augustine evolved a method to successfully outlaw and deconstruct the Donatist Church’s organisation. This hinged on concerted preaching, tract writing, integrating Roman imperial authorities, and critically: by denying the Donatists’ exclusive claim to Cyprian of Carthage. Re-appropriation of Cyprian’s authority required Augustine and his allies to re-write history and pose positions contrary to Cyprian’s. In the end, Cyprian was the Donatists’ no longer.

The eleven essays in Emancipating Calvin: Culture and Confessional Identity in Francophone Reformed Communities demonstrate the vitality and variety of early modern Francophone Reformed communities by examining the ways that local contexts shaped the reception and implementation of reforming ideas emanating especially from John Calvin and the Reformed church of Geneva. The articles address three main themes important for understanding the development of Reformed communities: the roles of consistories in Reformed churches and communities, the development of various Reformed cultures, and the ways in which ritual and worship embodied the theology and cultural foundations of Francophone Reformed churches. This Festschrift honors the pioneering work of Raymond Mentzer and reflects his influence in modern Francophone Reformed studies.

In The Arnhem Mystical Sermons: Preaching Liturgical Mysticism in the Context of Catholic Reform, Ineke Cornet presents the first in-depth study of this sermon collection from the canonnesses of St. Agnes in Arnhem. Through a careful analysis of sources and parallels, this book demonstrates how the sermons creatively integrate both Rhineland and Brabantine mysticism into a unique commentary on the liturgical year. The sermons, which contribute to the Catholic Reform, systematically explore the mystical celebration of the liturgy which underpins every aspect of the collection’s theology of inner ascent. Together with the Evangelical Pearl and the Temple of Our Soul, the sermons are part of a wider literary network that plays a significant part in the history of Dutch mysticism.

In Adam Boreel (1602-1665): A Collegiant’s Attempt to Reform Christianity, Francesco Quatrini offers a reassessment of the life and thought of Adam Boreel, a leading member of the Dutch nonconformist Collegiant movement. Usually regarded as a less important member of this religious group, Boreel is described as a forerunner whose ideas influenced later Collegiants.Drawing on both archival and published sources, Francesco Quatrini provides the first modern biography of Boreel as well as a critical analysis of his writings. He corrects misconceptions about Boreel, who appears here as an intriguing figure who drew his views from several different sources. In this way, Francesco Quatrini revealed that Boreel was a major leader in the era’s intellectual discourse.

In The Catholic Church and the Bible: From the Council of Trent to the Jansenist Controversy (1564–1733), Els Agten studies the impact of Jansenism and anti–Jansenism on the ideas regarding vernacular Bible reading and Bible production in the Low Countries in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. The book provides a review of book censorship during this time. Furthermore, it analyses the ideas and the writings of ten protagonists, including theologians, Bible translators, ecclesiastical authorities and representatives of Port-Royal. In particular, the author demonstrates how, even as their opponents took a more cautious position, the Jansenists encouraged the laity, including women and children, to read the Bible without any restrictions.