Der Band ist einem Gegenstand gewidmet, der nach Ansicht mancher Forscher gar nicht existiert. Die frühneuzeitliche Leichenpredigt gilt - nach und aufgrund der eminenten Aufwertung der Gattung durch Martin Luther - in weiten Kreisen der Forschung als exklusives kulturelles Phänomen der protestantischen Territorien innerhalb des deutschsprachigen Raumes, das niemals ein entsprechendes Pendant in den Beerdigungs- und Totenehrungsritualen der katholischen Kirche gefunden habe. Tatsächlich aber ist - trotz aller einschlägigen Verbote der katholischen Kirchenobrigkeiten - eine bislang noch nicht genau quantifizierbare Menge an gedruckten katholischen Leichenpredigten aus dem 16. bis 18. Jahrhundert überliefert, wenn auch in der Überzahl an entlegenen und schwer zugänglichen Orten (zumeist in kirchlichen Privatbibliotheken). Ziel des Bandes ist es, jene über Jahrzehnte hinweg kolportierte Forschungsmeinung zu widerlegen und erste Ansätze zu einer Erschließung von katholischen Leichenpredigten der frühen Neuzeit zu liefern. In zwölf interdisziplinär breit gestreuten Studien werden die unterschiedlichsten druck-, sozial-, frömmigkeits-, rhetorik- und kunstgeschichtlichen Aspekte dieser Gattung katholischer Gebrauchstexte erstmals in den Blick der kulturhistorischen Forschung genommen. Zum anderen werden in einem Katalog die Bestände an deutschsprachigen katholischen Leichenpredigten in Einzeldrucken aus zwei bedeutenden einschlägigen Sammlungen (Stiftsbibliothek Klosterneuburg, Universitätsbibliothek Eichstätt) exemplarisch durch Autopsieaufnahmen auf hohem bibliographischem Niveau erschlossen.

Der Band ist einem Gegenstand gewidmet, der nach Ansicht mancher Forscher gar nicht existiert. Die frühneuzeitliche Leichenpredigt gilt - nach und aufgrund der eminenten Aufwertung der Gattung durch Martin Luther - in weiten Kreisen der Forschung als exklusives kulturelles Phänomen der protestantischen Territorien innerhalb des deutschsprachigen Raumes, das niemals ein entsprechendes Pendant in den Beerdigungs- und Totenehrungsritualen der katholischen Kirche gefunden habe. Tatsächlich aber ist - trotz aller einschlägigen Verbote der katholischen Kirchenobrigkeiten - eine bislang noch nicht genau quantifizierbare Menge an gedruckten katholischen Leichenpredigten aus dem 16. bis 18. Jahrhundert überliefert, wenn auch in der Überzahl an entlegenen und schwer zugänglichen Orten (zumeist in kirchlichen Privatbibliotheken). Ziel des Bandes ist es, jene über Jahrzehnte hinweg kolportierte Forschungsmeinung zu widerlegen und erste Ansätze zu einer Erschließung von katholischen Leichenpredigten der frühen Neuzeit zu liefern. In zwölf interdisziplinär breit gestreuten Studien werden die unterschiedlichsten druck-, sozial-, frömmigkeits-, rhetorik- und kunstgeschichtlichen Aspekte dieser Gattung katholischer Gebrauchstexte erstmals in den Blick der kulturhistorischen Forschung genommen. Zum anderen werden in einem Katalog die Bestände an deutschsprachigen katholischen Leichenpredigten in Einzeldrucken aus zwei bedeutenden einschlägigen Sammlungen (Stiftsbibliothek Klosterneuburg, Universitätsbibliothek Eichstätt) exemplarisch durch Autopsieaufnahmen auf hohem bibliographischem Niveau erschlossen.

The Annual Bibliography of the History of the Printed Book and Libraries aims at recording articles of scholarly value which relate to the history of the printed book, to the history of arts, crafts, techniques and equipment, and of the economic social and cultural environment, involved in its production, distribution, conservation and description.

Lucas Osiander (1534-1604) was an influential preacher of the Lutheran orthodoxy. As a Wuerttemberg court preacher and superintendent, he played a central role when the country was established as one of the leading Lutheran forces in the Empire. Osiander preached to a wide audience in a time when sermons were a privileged form of communication and when preachers could address and negotiate the central interests in society. Using confessionalization theory, Sivert Angel studies Osiander's preaching in its political and theological context and shows how Osiander as a preacher could exert political influence. By analyzing Osiander's sermons in light of his own homiletic, the author describes how Osiander's role as a preacher may be traced in his sermons' rhetoric structures and in his use of theological concepts. The discussion of Osiander's theory and practice of preaching documents the ways that Osiander's sermons reinforced the existing political and social order and portrays central aspects of theology and piety in the later sixteenth century.

Introduction: A Royal Visit -- 1:Lorenz Heidenreich (1480-1557), Oswald Pergener (1490s-1546) and the Many Faces of the Lusatian Reformation -- 2:Johannes Hass (c. 1476-1544): History Writing and Divine Intervention in the Early Reformation -- 3:Andreas Günther (1502-1570): Religion, Politics and Power in the Lusatian League -- 4:Bartholomäus Scultetus (1540-1614): Learning, Teaching and Remembering in the Towns of the Lusatian League -- 5:Johann Leisentrit (1527-1586): Redefining Catholicism in a Lutheran Region -- 6:Sigismund Suevus (1526-1596): Sharing Spaces and Objects -- 7:Martin Moller (1547-1606): Possibilities and Limits of Toleration -- 8:Friedrich Fischer (1558-1623): Repositioning Lutheranism and Negotiating Ways Forward -- Conclusion: The Lusatian Reformation.

This study offers a broad outline of the history of the eighteenth-century sermon. Thematically, it provides an overview of the research over the past three decades as well as suggesting new approaches to the history of preaching.

A groundbreaking approach to Rococo religious d?r and spirituality in Europe and South America, The Spiritual Rococo addresses three basic conundrums that impede our understanding of eighteenth-century aesthetics and culture. Why did the Rococo, ostensibly the least spiritual style in the pre-Modern canon, transform into one of the world?s most important modes for adorning sacred spaces? And why is Rococo still treated as a decadent nemesis of the Enlightenment when the two had fundamental characteristics in common? This book seeks to answer these questions by treating Rococo as a global phenomenon for the first time and by exploring its moral and spiritual dimensions through the lens of populist French religious literature of the day-a body of work the author calls the ?Spiritual Rococo? and which has never been applied directly to the arts. The book traces Rococo?s development from France through Central Europe, Portugal, Brazil, and South America by following a chain of interlocking case studies, whether artistic, literary, or ideological, and it also considers the parallel diffusion of the literature of the Spiritual Rococo in these same regions, placing particular emphasis on unpublished primary sources such as inventories. One of the ultimate goals of this study is to move beyond the clich?f Rococo?s frivolity and acknowledge its essential modernity. Thoroughly interdisciplinary, The Spiritual Rococo not only integrates different art historical fields in novel ways but also interacts with church and social history, literary and post-colonial studies, and anthropology, opening up new horizons in these fields.

Benedictine scholars around 1700, most prominently proponents of historical criticism, have long been regarded as the spearhead of ecclesiastical learning on the brink of Enlightenment, first in France, then in Germany and other parts of Europe. Based on unpublished sources, this book is the first to contextualize this narrative in its highly complex pre-modern setting, and thus at some distance from modernist ascriptions ex posteriori. Challenged by Protestant and Catholic anti-monasticism, Benedictine scholars strove to maintain control of their intellectual tradition. They failed thoroughly, however: in the Holy Roman Empire, their success depended on an anti-Roman and nationalized reading of their research. For them, becoming part of an Enlightenment narrative meant becoming part of a cultural project of “Germany”.

The essays in this volume reflect the broader interpretation of culture as a system of shared meanings, values, attitudes and symbolic forms in any sphere of human life. Although thematically diverse, all these studies adhere to the concept of what is sometimes termed the new cultural history or socio-cultural history. The work opens with a cluster of methodological and historiographical reflections. Topics covered by the thematic sections include confessional and religious life in early modern Europe, symbolism and representation, strife and accommodation among different denominations compelled to live in a common space, order and hierarchy, cracks in the machinery of authority and the threat of disintegration as well as the history of alphabetization, literacy and reading and writing practices. This book pays tribute to István György Tóth (1956–2005), Head of the Department of Early-Modern History at the Institute of History of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences, and Professor of History at Central European University (both in Budapest), until his premature death in 2005.

This anthology assembles cross-disciplinary perspectives on the experience of and responses to forms of material and spiritual loss in early modern Germany, tracing how individuals and communities registered, coped with, and made sense of such events as war, religious reform, bankruptcy, religious marginalization, the death of spouses and children, and the loss of freedom of movement through a spectrum of activities including writing poetry, keeping diaries, erecting monuments, collecting books, singing, painting, reconfiguring space, repeatedly migrating, and painting, and thereby not only turned loss into gain but self-consciously made history. Emerging from the 2008 interdisiplinary conference of Frühe Neuzeit Interdisziplinär, the essays reveal how loss helped to create identity and gave rise to agency and creativity on the cusp of modernity. Contributors are Rosalind J. Beiler, Claudia Benthien, Jill Bepler, Duane J. Corpis, Alexander J. Fisher, Ulrike Gleixner, Claudia Jarzebowski, Hans Medick, Barbara Lawatsch Melton, Christopher Ocker, Helmut Puff, Thomas Max Safley, Jeffrey Chipps Smith, Lynne Tatlock, Mara Wade, Lee Palmer Wandel, and Bethany Wiggin.