Empire's Reformations Politics and Religion in Germany, 1495-1648
Produktdetaljer
Biografisk notat
David M. Luebke is the Katherine G. Brady & Thomas A. Brady, Jr., Roger Chickering & Alison Baker Professor of Central European Histories at the University of Oregon, USA. He is the author of Hometown Religion: Regimes of Coexistence in Early Modern Westphalia, 1535-1650 (2016), which was awarded the Gerald Strauss Prize in 2017 and His Majesty's Rebels: Communities, Factions, and Rural Revolt in the Black Forest, 1725-1745 (1997). He is also founding editor of Spektrum: Publications of the German Studies Association and series co-editor of Studies in Central European Histories.David Luebke’s important and original book shows how the religious movements that exploded in the Reformation also shaped the development of the early modern Holy Roman Empire. His engaging, highly readable and stimulating text will be essential reading for students and scholars alike. - <i>Joachim Whaley FBA, Emeritus Professor of German History and Thought, University of Cambridge, UK</i>
The Empire's Reformations provides a concise overview of reform movements in 16th-century Germany that gave birth to the modern division of western Christianity into multiple denominations – Roman Catholic, Lutheran, Calvinist, and more. It exposes the origins of modern religious pluralism, both in battle for souls among these emerging camps and in the struggles of political leaders at every level to manage the threat that religious diversity posed to tranquillity and order in a rigidly hierarchical society. As such, it offers a prehistory of religious toleration, not as a positive value – few regarded toleration as inherently good – but as a strategy for keeping the peace.
David M. Luebke considers the reformations of religion in the context of concurrent transformations in the political and judicial structures of the Holy Roman Empire, that sprawling confederation of principalities and city-states that embraced most regions where German was spoken. This allows Luebke to view the religious reforms through the lens of imperial politics, showing how the Empire differed from the Atlantic monarchies, Eastern Europe, Scandinavia, and the Mediterranean. On a different and equally significant level, he examines how ordinary people of all backgrounds experienced the controversy over religion and responded to reforms of doctrine and observance. The inclusion of both the imperial and local perspectives moves the Reformation beyond the familiar story of theological combat and reimagines it as something that had resonance throughout the world, impacting people’s lives in the process.
Chronology
1. Preconditions of Reform
2. Insurgency and Wild Growth
3. Toward a Multiconfessional Empire
4. Managing Plurality
Conclusion: A New Regime – Politics and Religion after the Thirty Years War
Index
The German History in Focus series introduces the main eras of German history since the Middle Ages in a short, easily surveyable and focussed way. Each volume provides readers with an accessible and up-to-date overview of the subject. The volumes cover essential periods in German history, from medieval to contemporary history. Each book examines political life, the economy, society and cultural life during a specific period of German history. The focussed approach allows expert writers in their field to analyse a significant topic in a way that sheds light, particularly for a student audience, on the key or essential aspects of the history of each era or topic. The series offers a fresh and up-to-date insight into many traditional aspects of German history that either have not been approached in this way, or perhaps more significantly, have not been treated recently. The series gives an English language readership access to the most recent developments in the field, including scholarship in German. Within each volume, readers will be able to understand the essence of the period or topic in the title. Each book provides a clearly structured and focussed examination of the period, furnishing readers with completely up-to-date analyses, with reference to the most recent historiography. The individual books and the series as a whole, give readers a clear sense of developments in German history in key aspects of political, economic, social and cultural life.
Series Editors
Lisa Pine, University of London, UK
Peter C. Caldwell, Rice University, USA
Editorial Advisory Board
Benjamin Marschke, Humboldt State University, USA
Monica Black, University of Tennessee, Knoxville, USA
Matthew Jefferies, University of Manchester, UK
Neil Gregor, University of Southampton, UK
Christina Morina, Bielefeld University, Germany
Joachim Whaley, University of Cambridge, UK
Bridget Heal, University of St. Andrews, UK