Utilizing Erastus’s correspondence, this book offers a synthetic treatment of Erastus’s career in the Palatinate including his role in the territory’s conversion, the Heidelberg Catechism, the church discipline controversy, as well as his refutation of Paracelsus and Johann Weyer.

This study is the first monograph to attempt a synthetic treatment of the career of Thomas Erastus (1524-1583). Erastus was a central player in the conversion of the Electoral Palatinate to Reformed Christianity in the early 1560s and a co-author of the Heidelberg Catechism. In the church discipline controversy of the 1560s and 1570s, Erastus opposed the Calvinist effort to institute a consistory of elders with independent authority over excommunication. Erastus’s defeat in this controversy, and the ensuing Antitrinitarian affair, proved the watershed of his career. He turned to the refutation of Paracelsus and a debate with Johann Weyer on the punishment of witches. The epilogue tracks Erastus’s later career and the reception of his works into the seventeenth century.

This study begins with an examination of Girolamo Zanchi's De Tribus Elohim (1572), setting this important defense of the doctrine of the Trinity in the immediate context of the recent rise of antitrinitarianism within the Reformed Palatinate. De Tribus Elohim focused on the grammatical peculiarity of the Hebrew word Elohim (God) in order to refute the biblicism of its contemporary antitrinitarians. In doing so, Zanchi's argument followed an exegetical thread common within the late medieval case for the doctrine of the Trinity, but which ran contrary to the exegetical sensibilities of many of Zanchi's own Reformed colleagues. This disagreement over the correct interpretation of the word Elohim, then became a touchstone for distinguishing between two different approaches to the Hebrew text with the Reformed Church of the late sixteenth century, and becomes a significant piece in understanding the development of Reformed exegesis.

This book traces the history of the "Church Crisis", a conflict between the Protestant and Anglo-Catholic (Ritualist) parties within the Church of England between 1898 and 1906. During this period, increasing numbers of Britons embraced Anglo-Catholicism and even converted to Roman Catholicism. Consequent fears that Catholicism was undermining the "Protestant" heritage of the established church led to a moral panic. The Crisis led to a temporary revival of Erastianism as protestant groups sought to stamp out Catholicism within the established church through legislation whilst Anglo-Catholics, who valued ecclesiastical autonomy, opposed any such attempts. The eventual victory of forces in favor of greater ecclesiastical autonomy ended parliamentary attempts to control church practice, sounding the death knell of Erastianism. Despite increased acknowledgment that religious concerns remained deep-seated around the turn of the century, historians have failed to recognize that this period witnessed a high point in Protestant-Catholic antagonism and a shift in the relationship between the established church and Parliament. Parliament’s increasing unwillingness to address ecclesiastical concerns in this period was not an example advancing political secularity. Rather, Parliament’s increased reluctance to engage with the Church of England illustrates the triumph of an anti-Erastian conception of church-state relations.

Byung Soo Han intends to answer, by investigating the merger of patristic and contemporary sources in the theological method of Amandus Polanus, a significant question concerning the way in which the intellectual and methodological eclecticism of the Reformed was able to establish a coherent "system" of thought capable of defense as not only confessional but also orthodox in its theology and broadly catholic, drawing both on the thought of the Reformers and on the resources of the great tradition of Christian thought that extended back to the church fathers. From a methodological perspective, Polanus's development from the Ramistically-organized doctrinal framework of the early Partitiones, through the increasingly detailed and specialized efforts of the commentaries, disputations, and Symphonia, indicates a fairly clear, concerted effort to build toward a detailed systematic presentation – and in fact, each of these earlier efforts provided as it were building-blocks that would be incorporated into the Syntagma. This constructive labor itself serves to set aside the claim that Polanus based his theology on a deductive principle. The specific focus of the book is on the place and function of backgrounds and sources, traditional and contemporary, with particular emphasis on the place of the church fathers in Reformed orthodoxy. Polanus's patristic work, Symphonia, and its eventual impact on his full systematic work, the Syntagma, provides a singular case, within the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, of the reformulation of patristic thought in a fully systematized form, suitable for combination with the results of biblical exegesis and contemporary doctrinal argumentation in the formulation of Reformed orthodox theology. This study attempts to assess the claim of catholicity and orthodoxy by Reformed theology, demonstrating the formative function of patristic thought in Polanus's theology. Further, the study illustrates the place of this traditionary exercise within the methodologically eclectic approach followed by Polanus and his contemporaries as they created a theology that drew not only on Scripture and contemporary philosophical assumptions but also on patristic, medieval, Reformation-era, traditionary Aristotelian, Platonic, and Ramist sources. This study, therefore, reappraises the development of Reformed orthodoxy. In Polanus's case, an older scholarship that read his theology as based on central dogmas or as an exercise of rationalism will be set aside in favor of a more nuanced view of his sources and method. Within this larger framework, Polanus's use of the fathers builds on and confirms the Reformers's assumption of catholicity in the face of the detailed polemics of Robert Bellarmine as well as confirming the point that his approach to formulation was traditionary and somewhat eclectic. Finally, the book identifies the theological cohesion of the early orthodox Reformed model, as exemplified by Polanus's thought, especially in its method of drawing together of traditionary materials from varied sources. In short, the book demonstrates the importance of the church fathers to the formulation of a Reformed orthodox and catholic theology in the context of showing, contrary to previous studies of Polanus's thought and contrary to the older stereotypes of "Calvinist" orthodoxy, that Reformed orthodoxy was neither a rigid monolith nor a matter of philosophical speculation but the product of a carefully conceived exercise in the compilation and assessment of biblical and traditionary materials.

Few periods in history are so fundamentally contradictory as the Baroque, the culture flourishing from the mid-sixteenth to the mid-eighteenth centuries in Europe. When we hear the term âBaroque,â the first images that come to mind are symmetrically designed gardens in French chateaux, scenic fountains in Italian squares, and the vibrant rhythms of a harpsichord. Behind this commitment to rule, harmony, and rigid structure, however, the Baroque also embodies a deep fascination with wonder, excess, irrationality, and rebellion against order. The Oxford Handbook of the Baroque delves into this contradiction to provide a sweeping survey of the Baroque not only as a style but also as a historical, cultural, and intellectual concept. With its thirty-eight chapters edited by leading expert John D. Lyons, the Handbook explores different manifestations of Baroque culture, from theatricality in architecture and urbanism to opera and dance, from the role of water to innovations in fashion, from mechanistic philosophy and literature to the tension between religion and science. These discussions present the Baroque as a broad cultural phenomenon that arose in response to the enormous changes emerging from the sixteenth century: the division between Catholics and Protestants, the formation of nation-states and the growth of absolutist monarchies, the colonization of lands outside Europe and the mutual impact of European and non-European cultures. Technological developments such as the telescope and the microscope and even greater access to high-quality mirrors altered mankindâs view of the universe and of human identity itself. By exploring the Baroque in relation to these larger social upheavals, this Handbook reveals a fresh and surprisingly modern image of the Baroque as a powerful response to an epoch of crisis.

A fresh look at the importance of natural and international law in the religious politics at the heartlands of the Reformation, from the Low Countries, the German principalities up to Transylvania; from Niels Hemmingsen to Gian Battista Vico; from religious reasons for the universalist claims of natural law to political arguments for the sacred polity, their tension and creative potential.

This book explores the secrets of the extraordinary editorial success of Jacobus Acontius' Satan's Stratagems, an important book that intrigued readers and outraged religious authorities across Europe. Despite condemnation by the Catholic Church, the work, first published in Basel in 1565, was a resounding success. For the next century it was republished dozens of times in different historical context, from France to Holland to England. The work sowed the idea that religious persecution and coercion are stratagems made up by the devil to destroy the kingdom of God. Acontius' work prepared the ground for religious toleration amid seemingly unending religious conflicts. In Revolutionary England it was propagated by latitudinarians and independents, but also harshly censored by Presbyterians as a dangerous Socinian book. Giorgio Caravale casts new light on the reasons why both Catholics and Protestants welcomed this work as one of the most threatening attacks to their religious power. This book is an invaluable resource for anyone interested in the history of toleration, in the Reformation and Counter-Reformation across Europe.

From Rome to Zurich, between Ignatius and Vermigli brings notable scholars from the fields of Reformation and Early Modern studies to honor their friend, mentor, and colleague, John Patrick Donnelly with essays commensurate with his own broad interests and scholarship. Touching Protestant scholasticism, Reformation era life writing, Reformation polemics – both Protestant and Catholic – and with several on theology proper, inter alia, the essays collected here by a group of international scholars break new ground in Reformation history, thought, and theology, providing fresh insights into current scholarship in both Reformation and Catholic Reformation studies. The essays take in the broad scope of the 16th century, from Thomas More to Martin Bucer, and from Thomas Stapleton to Peter Martyr Vermigli. Contributors include: Emidio Campi, Maryanne Cline Horowitz, A. Lynn Martin, Thomas McCoog, SJ, Joseph McLelland, Richard A. Muller, Eric Parker, Robert Scully, SJ, and Jason Zuidema

This study explores the integral role of astrological concepts and imagery in preparing the ground for the Reformation, and in shaping the distinctive characteristics of German Christian culture through the early seventeenth century.