The chambers of rhetoric in the Low Countries were amateur guilds or confraternities of laymen especially devoted to the composition of vernacular poetry and drama. The members were trained to perform not only in the semiprivate sphere of their chambers, but also in the public sphere, often in the context of civic festivals. This article asks if women had access to this formal literary culture...
“To Oblige My Brethren”: The Reformed Funeral Sermons of Johann Brandmüller
Read more
Sixteenth century Lutheran funeral sermons were intended for both clerical and popular audiences and sought to instruct and console the grieving. Unlike the Lutherans, the Reformed rejected most funeral ceremonial, including the preaching of funeral sermons. The collection of funeral sermons by the Reformed pastor Johann Brandmüller is unique in applying the Reformed style of published...
The First Parliament of Mary, Queen of Scots
Read more
Mary, Queen of Scots promised to make a parliamentary religious settlement when she returned, as a Catholic, to her newly Protestant realm of Scotland in 1561. She then delayed summoning a parliament until 1563, and the summons, when it came, was engineered by her leading Protestant adviser, the earl of Moray. However, when parliament assembled, Mary outmaneuvered Moray with a series of well-...
The Miraculous Body of Evidence: Visionary Experience, Medical Discourse, and the Inquisition in ...
Read more
This article analyzes the role of medical discourse in assessing the veracity of visionary experience in Golden Age Spain. Focusing on the Inquisition’s prosecution of suspected impostors, it describes the ways in which medicine could function as a tool of ecclesiastical discipline. The central argument is that by emphasizing the role of physiological factors in the genesis of many seemingly...
Melanchthon’s Doctrinal Last Will and Testament: The Responsiones ad articulos Bavaricae ...
Read more
The day before his death (18 April 1560) Philip Melanchthon designated in his will that his Responsiones ad articulos Bavaricae inquisitionis, composed a year earlier, should be his final confession of faith. Directed primarily against the theology of articles prepared for an ecclesiastical visitation by the government of Bavarian duke Albrecht V, this treatise criticized the Roman Catholic...
Friedrich Förner, the Catholic Reformation, and Witch-Hunting in Bamberg
Read more
Friedrich Förner, a principal architect of the Catholic Reformation in Bamberg, is especially remembered for his 1626 treatise on witchcraft, Panoplia Armaturae Dei. An examination of the full range Förner’s writings reveals a common logic that underlay his approach to the problems of witch-hunting and Catholic reform. From a historical perspective, the rise of witchcraft and Calvinism...
Anthonius Margaritha—Honest Reporter?
Read more
Anthonius Margaritha, the son of a rabbi, was a German Jew who converted to Christianity in 1522. He is best remembered for his Der gantz Jüdisch Glaub (1530), in which he described many Jewish customs, gave his German translation of the Hebrew prayer book, and presented a “refutation” of Judaism. The accuracy of his ethnographic data is crucial to using Der gantz Jüdisch glaub in scholarly...