Professor Irena Backus's Books

Life Writing in Reformation Europe

Lives of Reformers by Friends, Disciples and Foes

By: Professor Irena Backus

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Life Writing in Reformation Europe

Lives of Reformers by Friends, Disciples and Foes

By: Professor Irena Backus

The Reformation period witnessed an explosion in the number of biographies of contemporary religious figures being published. Whether lives of reformers worthy of emulation, or heretics deserving condemnation, the genre of biography became a key element in the confessional rivalries that raged across Europe in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Offering more than a general survey of Life writing, this volume examines key issues and questions about how this trend developed among different confessions and how it helped shape lasting images of reformers, particularly Luther and Calvin up to the modern period. This is the first-ever full length study of the subject showing that Lives of the reformers constitute an integral part of the intellectual and cultural history of the period, serving as an important source of information about the different Reformations. Depending on their origin, they provide a lesson in theology but also in civic values and ideals of education of the period. Genevan Lives in particular also point up the delicate issue of 'Reformed hagiography' which their authors try to avoid with a varying degree of success. Having consistently been at the forefront of the study of the intellectual history of the Reformation Irena Backus is perfectly placed to highlight the importance of Life writing. This is a path-breaking study that will open up a new way of viewing the confessional conflicts of the period and their historiography.

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316

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Ashgate Publishing, Ltd.

Published Date

ISBN 10

140948002X

ISBN 13

9781409480020

Catholic Reformation in Protestant Britain

By: Professor Alexandra Walsham

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Catholic Reformation in Protestant Britain

By: Professor Alexandra Walsham

This volume brings together ten essays by Alexandra Walsham dealing with Catholic Reformation in Protestant Britain. It revisits questions about the Catholic experience in England, Wales and Scotland, and situates it in the wider European context of the Counter Reformation to take stock of the current scholarly debate and suggest avenues for future research. Two of the chapters are entirely new, whilst the others are all updated and revised versions of previously published pieces.

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509

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Ashgate Publishing, Ltd.

Published Date

ISBN 10

075465723X

ISBN 13

9780754657231

The Unaccommodated Calvin : Studies in the Foundation of a Theological Tradition

Studies in the Foundation of a Theological Tradition

By: Richard A. Muller P. J. Zondervan Professor of Historical Theology Calvin Theological Seminary

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The Unaccommodated Calvin : Studies in the Foundation of a Theological Tradition

Studies in the Foundation of a Theological Tradition

By: Richard A. Muller P. J. Zondervan Professor of Historical Theology Calvin Theological Seminary

This book attempts to understand Calvin in his 16th-century context, with attention to continuities and discontinuities between his thought and that of his predecessors, contemporaries, and successors. Muller pays particular attention to the interplay between theological and philosophical themes common to Calvin and the medieval doctors, and to developments in rhetoric and method associated with humanism.

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326

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Oxford University Press, USA

Published Date

ISBN 10

0198027648

ISBN 13

9780198027645

Narratives of the Religious Self in Early-Modern Scotland

By: Professor David George Mullan

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Narratives of the Religious Self in Early-Modern Scotland

By: Professor David George Mullan

Drawing on a rich, yet untapped source of Scottish autobiographical writing, this book provides a fascinating insight into the nature and extent of early-modern religious narratives. Over 80 such personal documents, including diaries and autobiographies (both manuscript and published), are examined and placed both within the context of seventeenth-century Scotland, as well as the broader history of 'conversion'.

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466

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Ashgate Publishing, Ltd.

Published Date

ISBN 10

1409480682

ISBN 13

9781409480686

Censorship and Civic Order in Reformation Germany, 1517–1648

'Printed Poison & Evil Talk'

By: Professor Allyson F Creasman

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Censorship and Civic Order in Reformation Germany, 1517–1648

'Printed Poison & Evil Talk'

By: Professor Allyson F Creasman

The history of the European Reformation is intimately bound-up with the development of printing. With the ability of the printed word to distribute new ideas, theologies and philosophies widely and cheaply, early-modern society was quick to recognise the importance of being able to control what was published. Whilst much has been written on censorship within Catholic lands, much less scholarship is available on how Protestant territories sought to control the flow of information. In this ground-breaking study, Allyson F. Creasman reassesses the Reformation's spread by examining how censorship impacted upon public support for reform in the German cities. Drawing upon criminal court records, trial manuscripts and contemporary journals – mainly from the city of Augsburg – the study exposes the networks of rumour, gossip, cheap print and popular songs that spread the Reformation message and shows how ordinary Germans adapted these messages to their own purposes. In analysing how print and oral culture intersected to fuel popular protest and frustrate official control, the book highlights the limits of both the reformers's influence and the magistrates's authority. The study concludes that German cities were forced to adapt their censorship policies to the political and social pressures within their communities – in effect meaning that censorship was as much a product of public opinion as it was a force acting upon it. As such this study furthers debates, not only on the spread and control of information within early modern society, but also with regards to where exactly within that society the impetus for reform was most strong.

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501

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Ashgate Publishing, Ltd.

Published Date

ISBN 10

1409461815

ISBN 13

9781409461814

Heinrich Heshusius and Confessional Polemic in Early Lutheran Orthodoxy

By: Professor Michael J Halvorson

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Heinrich Heshusius and Confessional Polemic in Early Lutheran Orthodoxy

By: Professor Michael J Halvorson

Heinrich Heshusius (1556-97) became a leading church superintendent and polemicist during the early age of Lutheran orthodoxy, and played a major role in the reform and administration of several German cities during the late Reformation. As well as offering an introduction to Heshusius's writings and ideas, this volume explores the wider world of late-sixteenth-century German Lutheranism in which he lived and worked. In particular, it looks at the important but inadequately understood network of Lutheran clergymen in North Germany centred around universities such as Rostock, Jena, Königsberg, and Helmstedt, and territories such as Braunschweig-Wolfenbüttel, in the years after the promulgation of the Formula of Concord (1577). In 1579, Heshusius followed his father Tilemann to the newly founded University of Helmstedt, where Heinrich served as a professor on the philosophy faculty and established lasting connections within the Gnesio-Lutheran party. In the 1590s, Heshusius completed his doctoral degree in theology and worked as a pastor and superintendent in Tonna and Hildesheim, publishing over seventy sermons as well as a popular catechism based on the Psalms and Luther's Small Catechism. As confessional tensions mounted in Hildesheim, Heshusius worked as a polemicist for the Lutheran cause, pressing for the conversion or expulsion of local Jews. At the same time, Heshusius began to argue aggressively for the expulsion of Jesuits, who had been increasing in number due to the activities of the local bishop and administrator, Ernst II of Bavaria. By discussing the connection between these two expulsion efforts, and the practical activities Heshusius undertook as a preacher, catechist, and administrator, this study portrays Heshusius as a zealous protector of Lutheran traditions in the face of confessional rivals. Understanding this zeal, and the policies, piety, and propaganda that came as a result, is an important factor in relating how Lutheran orthodoxy gained momentum within Germany in the last decades of the sixteenth century. In all this book will reveal the complex characteristics of an important (but virtually unknown) Lutheran superintendent and theologian active during the era of confessionalization, providing a useful resource for the ongoing efforts of scholars hoping to understand the nature of orthodoxy and its importance for early modern Europeans.f

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294

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Ashgate Publishing, Ltd.

Published Date

ISBN 10

140948100X

ISBN 13

9781409481003

Philip Sidney and the Poetics of Renaissance Cosmopolitanism

By: Professor Robert E Stillman

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Philip Sidney and the Poetics of Renaissance Cosmopolitanism

By: Professor Robert E Stillman

Celebrations of literary fictions as autonomous worlds appeared first in the Renaissance and were occasioned, paradoxically, by their power to remedy the ills of history. Robert E. Stillman explores this paradox in relation to Philip Sidney's Defence of Poesy, the first Renaissance text to argue for the preeminence of poetry as an autonomous form of knowledge in the public domain. Offering a fresh interpretation of Sidney's celebration of fiction-making, Stillman locates the origins of his poetics inside a neglected historical community: the intellectual elite associated with Philip Melanchthon (leader of the German Reformation after Luther), the so-called Philippists. As a challenge to traditional Anglo-centric scholarship, his study demonstrates how Sidney's education by Continental Philippists enabled him to dignify fiction-making as a compelling form of public discourse-compelling because of its promotion of powerful new concepts about reading and writing, its ecumenical piety, and its political ambition to secure through natural law (from universal 'Ideas') freedom from the tyranny of confessional warfare. Intellectually ambitious and wide-ranging, this study draws together various elements of contemporary scholarship in literary, religious, and political history in order to afford a broader understanding of the Defence and the cultural context inside which Sidney produced both his poetry and his poetics.

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290

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Ashgate Publishing, Ltd.

Published Date

ISBN 10

1409475026

ISBN 13

9781409475026

The Reformation of the Bible

The Bible of the Reformation

By: Professor Jaroslav Pelikan,Jaroslav Pelikan,Valerie R. Hotchkiss,David Price,Bridwell Library,Rare Book and Manuscript Library (New York),Harvard University (Cambridge, Mass.). Houghton Library

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The Reformation of the Bible

The Bible of the Reformation

By: Professor Jaroslav Pelikan,Jaroslav Pelikan,Valerie R. Hotchkiss,David Price,Bridwell Library,Rare Book and Manuscript Library (New York),Harvard University (Cambridge, Mass.). Houghton Library

It is equally true that the Reformation was inspired and defined by the Bible and that the Bible was reshaped by the intellectual, political, and cultural forces of the Reformation. In this book, a distinguished scholar--whose contributions to the field of religious studies have won him wide renown--explores this relationship, examining both the role of the Bible in the Reformation and the effect of the Reformation on the text of the Bible, Biblical studies, preaching and exegesis, and European culture in general. Jaroslav Pelikan begins by discussing the philological foundations of the "reformation" of the Biblical text, focusing on the revival of Greek and Hebrew language study and the important contributions to textual criticism by humanist scholars. He then examines the changing patterns of interpretation and communication of the Biblical text, the proliferation of vernacular versions of scripture and their impact on various national cultures, and the impact of the Reformation Bible on art, music, and literature of the period. The book is richly illustrated with examples of early printed editions of Bibles, commentaries, sermons, vernacular translations, and other works with Biblical themes, all of which are identified and discussed. The book serves as the catalog for a major exhibition of early Bibles and Reformation texts that has been organized at Bridwell Library, Perkins School of Theology, Southern Methodist University, and will also be shown at the Yale Center for British Art, the Houghton Library and the Widener Library at Harvard University, and the Rare Book and Manuscript Library at Columbia University.

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232

Publisher

Yale University Press

Published Date

ISBN 10

0300066678

ISBN 13

9780300066678

Theology and Science in the Thought of Francis Bacon

By: Professor Steven Matthews

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Theology and Science in the Thought of Francis Bacon

By: Professor Steven Matthews

This study re-evaluates the religious beliefs of Francis Bacon and the role which his theology played in the development of his program for the reform of learning and the natural sciences, the Great Instauration. Bacon's Instauration writings are saturated with theological statements and Biblical references which inform and explain his program, yet this aspect of his writings has received little attention. Previous considerations of Bacon's religion have been drawn from a fairly short list of his published writings. Consequently, Bacon has been portrayed as everything from an atheist to a Puritan; scholarly consensus is lacking. This book argues that by considering the historical context of Bacon's society, and his conversion from Puritanism to anti-Calvinism as a young man, his own theology can be brought into clearer focus, and his philosophy more properly understood. After leaving his mother's household, Bacon underwent a transformation of belief which led him away from his mother's Calvinism and toward the writings of the ancient Church Fathers, particularly Irenaeus of Lyon. Bacon's theology increasingly came to reflect the theological interests of his friend and editor Lancelot Andrewes. The patristic turn of Bacon's belief in the last two decades of the reign of Elizabeth significantly affected the development of his philosophical program which was produced in the first two decades of the Stuart era. This study then examines the theology present in the Instauration writings themselves and concludes with a consideration of the effect which Bacon's theology had on the subsequent direction of empirical science and natural theology in the English context. In so doing it not only offers a new perspective on Bacon, but will serve as a contribution toward a better understanding of the religious context of, and motivations behind, empirical science in early modern England.

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168

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Ashgate Publishing, Ltd.

Published Date

ISBN 10

1409480143

ISBN 13

9781409480143

Humanism and Protestantism in Early Modern English Education

By: Professor Ian Green

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Humanism and Protestantism in Early Modern English Education

By: Professor Ian Green

This volume is the first attempt to assess the impact of both humanism and Protestantism on the education offered to a wide range of adolescents in the hundreds of grammar schools operating in England between the Reformation and the Enlightenment. By placing that education in the context of Lutheran, Calvinist and Jesuit education abroad, it offers an overview of the uses to which Latin and Greek were put in English schools, and identifies the strategies devised by clergy and laity in England for coping with the tensions between classical studies and Protestant doctrine. It also offers a reassessment of the role of the 'godly' in English education, and demonstrates the many ways in which a classical education came to be combined with close support for the English Crown and established church. One of the major sources used is the school textbooks which were incorporated into the 'English Stock' set up by leading members of the Stationers' Company of London and reproduced in hundreds of thousands of copies during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Although the core of classical education remained essentially the same for two centuries, there was a growing gulf between the methods by which classics were taught in elite institutions such as Winchester and Westminster and in the many town and country grammar schools in which translations or bilingual versions of many classical texts were given to weaker students. The success of these new translations probably encouraged editors and publishers to offer those adults who had received little or no classical education new versions of works by Aesop, Cicero, Ovid, Virgil, Seneca and Caesar. This fascination with ancient Greece and Rome left its mark not only on the lifestyle and literary tastes of the educated elite, but also reinforced the strongly moralistic outlook of many of the English laity who equated virtue and good works with pleasing God and meriting salvation.

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404

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Ashgate Publishing, Ltd.

Published Date

ISBN 10

1409480380

ISBN 13

9781409480389

Commonwealth and the English Reformation

Protestantism and the Politics of Religious Change in the Gloucester Vale, 1483–1560

By: Professor Ben Lowe

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Commonwealth and the English Reformation

Protestantism and the Politics of Religious Change in the Gloucester Vale, 1483–1560

By: Professor Ben Lowe

Whilst much recent research has dealt with the popular response to the religious change ushered in during the mid-Tudor period, this book focuses not just on the response to broad liturgical and doctrinal change, but also looks at how theological and reform messages could be utilized among local leaders and civic elites. It is this cohort that has often been neglected in previous efforts to ascertain the often elusive position of the common woman or man. Using the Vale of Gloucester as a case study, the book refocuses attention onto the concept of "commonwealth" and links it to a gradual, but long-standing dissatisfaction with local religious houses. It shows how monasteries, endowed initially out of the charitable impulses of elites, increasingly came to depend on lay stewards to remain viable. During the economic downturn of the mid-Tudor period, when urban and landed elites refocused their attention on restoring the commonwealth which they believed had broken down, they increasingly viewed the charity offered by religious houses as insufficient to meet the local needs. In such a climate the Protestant social gospel seemed to provide a valid alternative to which many people gravitated. Holding to scrutiny the “revisionist revolution” of the past twenty years, the book reopens debate and challenges conventional thinking about the ways the traditional church lost influence in the late middle ages, positing the idea that the problems with the religious houses were not just the creation of the reformers but had rather a long history. In so doing it offers a more complete picture of reform that goes beyond head-counting by looking at the political relationships and how they were affected by religious ideas to bring about change.

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340

Publisher

Ashgate Publishing, Ltd.

Published Date

ISBN 10

1409480895

ISBN 13

9781409480891

The Oxford Handbook of Deification

By: Aquinas Chair in Theology and Philosophy Paul L Gavrilyuk,Ordinary Professor of Patristics and Ancient Languages Andrew Hofer O P,James N Jr and Mary D Perry Chair of Theology Matthew Levering

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The Oxford Handbook of Deification

By: Aquinas Chair in Theology and Philosophy Paul L Gavrilyuk,Ordinary Professor of Patristics and Ancient Languages Andrew Hofer O P,James N Jr and Mary D Perry Chair of Theology Matthew Levering

This handbook offers a comprehensive and varied study of deification within Christian theology. Forty-six leading experts in the field examine points of convergence and difference on the constitutive elements of deification across different writers, thinkers, and traditions.

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753

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Oxford University Press

Published Date

ISBN 10

0198865171

ISBN 13

9780198865179

The Prose Works of Andrew Marvell: 1676-1678

By: Professor Annabel Patterson,Andrew Marvell,Annabel M. Patterson

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The Prose Works of Andrew Marvell: 1676-1678

By: Professor Annabel Patterson,Andrew Marvell,Annabel M. Patterson

Andrew Marvell (1621-78) is best known today as the author of a handful of exquisite lyrics and provocative political poems. In his own time, however, Marvell was famous for his brilliant prose interventions in the major issues of the Restoration, religious toleration, and what he called "arbitrary" as distinct from parliamentary government. This is the first modern edition of all Marvell's prose pamphlets, complete with introductions and annotation explaining the historical context. Four major scholars of the Restoration era have collaborated to produce this truly Anglo-American edition. From the Rehearsal Transpros'd, a serio-comic best-seller which appeared with tacit permission from Charles II himself, through the documentary Account of the Growth of Popery and Arbitrary Government, Marvell established himself not only as a model of liberal thought for the eighteenth century but also as an irresistible new voice in political polemic, wittier, more literary, and hence more readable than his contemporaries.

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Page Count

515

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Yale University Press

Published Date

ISBN 10

0300099363

ISBN 13

9780300099362

Book's by Professor Irena Backus

Life Writing in Reformation Europe

Life Writing in Reformation Europe

Catholic Reformation in Protestant Britain

Catholic Reformation in Protestant Britain

The Unaccommodated Calvin : Studies in the Foundation of a Theological Tradition

The Unaccommodated Calvin : Studies in the Foundation of a Theological Tradition

Narratives of the Religious Self in Early-Modern Scotland

Narratives of the Religious Self in Early-Modern Scotland

Censorship and Civic Order in Reformation Germany, 1517–1648

Censorship and Civic Order in Reformation Germany, 1517–1648

Heinrich Heshusius and Confessional Polemic in Early Lutheran Orthodoxy

Heinrich Heshusius and Confessional Polemic in Early Lutheran Orthodoxy

Philip Sidney and the Poetics of Renaissance Cosmopolitanism

Philip Sidney and the Poetics of Renaissance Cosmopolitanism

The Reformation of the Bible

The Reformation of the Bible

Theology and Science in the Thought of Francis Bacon

Theology and Science in the Thought of Francis Bacon

Humanism and Protestantism in Early Modern English Education

Humanism and Protestantism in Early Modern English Education

Commonwealth and the English Reformation

Commonwealth and the English Reformation

The Oxford Handbook of Deification

The Oxford Handbook of Deification

The Prose Works of Andrew Marvell: 1676-1678

The Prose Works of Andrew Marvell: 1676-1678

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