Literature on Church History, 1914–1920. IV. The Church in Modern Times (Part One: The Period of the Enlightenment)

1924 ◽  
Vol 17 (3) ◽  
pp. 265-295
Author(s):  
Gustav Krüger
Keyword(s):  
Middle Ages ◽  
Church History ◽  
Modern World ◽  
Modern Times ◽  
The Enlightenment ◽  
The Reformation ◽  
The Church ◽  
The Middle Ages

It is a characteristic of German scholarship to see problems and to work with them in the solution of intellectual and spiritual questions. Certainly it is a praiseworthy trait in the field of history that it follows the inner relation of events and cannot rest until all the subtlest threads are discovered. Such a problem is presented in the rise of the modern world of thought and the inquiry as to the factors which have contributed to it. In von Below's book on the causes of the Reformation, referred to at the beginning of my third article (HThR, Jan. 1924, pp. 5f.), the question is discussed, among others, whether the transition from the Middle Ages to modern times is really to be found in Luther and his work.

Medieval Heretics as Protestant Martyrs

1993 ◽  
Vol 30 ◽  
pp. 185-207 ◽  
Author(s):  
Euan Cameron
Keyword(s):  
Sixteenth Century ◽  
Middle Ages ◽  
Martin Luther ◽  
Church History ◽  
Medieval Church ◽  
Church Polity ◽  
The Reformation ◽  
History Of ◽  
Articles Of Faith ◽  
The Church

Two themes which figure repeatedly in the history of the Western Church are the contrasting ones of tradition and renewal. To emphasize tradition, or continuity, is to stress the divine element in the continuous collective teaching and witness of the Church. To call periodically for renewal and reform is to acknowledge that any institution composed of people will, with time, lose its pristine vigour or deviate from its original purpose. At certain periods in church history the tension between these two themes has broken out into open conflict, as happened with such dramatic results in the Reformation of the sixteenth century. The Protestant Reformers seem to present one of the most extreme cases where the desire for renewal triumphed over the instinct to preserve continuity of witness. A fundamentally novel analysis of the process by which human souls were saved was formulated by Martin Luther in the course of debate, and soon adopted or reinvented by others. This analysis was then used as a touchstone against which to test and to attack the most prominent features of contemporary teaching, worship, and church polity. In so far as any appeal was made to Christian antiquity, it was to the scriptural texts and to the early Fathers; though even the latter could be selected and criticized if they deviated from the primary articles of faith. There was, then, no reason why any of the Reformers should have sought to justify their actions by reference to any forbears or ‘forerunners’ in the Middle Ages, whether real or spurious. On the contrary, Martin Luther’s instinctive response towards those condemned by the medieval Church as heretics was to echo the conventional and prejudiced hostility felt by the religious intelligentsia towards those outside their pale.

Resistance to Tithes in the Middle Ages

1962 ◽  
Vol 13 (2) ◽  
pp. 172-185 ◽  
Author(s):  
Giles Constable
Keyword(s):  
Middle Ages ◽  
Income Tax ◽  
Modern Times ◽  
The Poor ◽  
Medieval Church ◽  
The Reformation ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Rich ◽  
The Middle Ages

The system of compulsory tithes in the Middle Ages has long been used by protestant and liberal historians as a stick with which to beat the medieval Church. ‘This most harassing and oppressive form of taxation’, wrote H. C. Lea in his well-known History of the Inquisition, ‘had long been the cause of incurable trouble, aggravated by the rapacity with which it was enforced, even to the pitiful collections of the gleaner’. Von Inama-Sternegg remarked on the growing hatred of tithes in the tenth, eleventh, and twelfth centuries, especially among the small free landholders, ‘upon whom the burden of tithes must have fallen most heavily’. Gioacchino Volpe said that tithes were ‘the more hated because they oppressed the rich less than the poor, the dependents on seigneurial estates less than the small free proprietors to whose ruin they contributed…. At that time tithes were both an ecclesiastical and secular oppression, a double offence against religious sentiment and popular misery’. G. G. Coulton, writing before the introduction in England of an income tax at a rate of over ten per cent., proclaimed that before the Reformation tithes ‘constituted a land tax, income tax and death duty far more onerous than any known to modern times, and proportionately unpopular’.

Lutheran and Catholic Reunionists in the Age of Bismarck

1988 ◽  
Vol 57 (S1) ◽  
pp. 89-107
Author(s):  
Manfred Fleischer
Keyword(s):  
Roman Empire ◽  
Middle Ages ◽  
Political Institutions ◽  
Final Analysis ◽  
Holy Roman Empire ◽  
National State ◽  
The Reformation ◽  
German People ◽  
The Church ◽  
The Middle Ages

Religious division has determined Germany's destiny. In the Middle Ages, it was the struggle between Emperor and Pope which doomed the Holy Roman Empire. During the Reformation, and the Thirty Years' War, it was Protestantism as well as the anti-Imperial diplomacy of the Pope and the French cardinals, which prevented the emergence of a national state and a centralized government. “From the split of the church dates all our misfortune,” complained in 1846 the Lutheran historian Johann Friedrich Böhmer, editor of a major medieval source collection. “It is a pity that the nation in the heart of Europe was drawn away from its political profession by quarrels with the church, that the development of strong political institutions was interrupted, that they eroded under the acids of religious passion and negation, so that the German people finally got into a stage of the disease where they are either seized by violent fever, or rot in apathy and despair. All our inner ferment which soon will erupt in a revolutionary outburst, all our political impotence and lethargy were, in the final analysis, caused by the split of the church, which tore us apart, and which no one can bridge. Only a new St. Boniface who would restore ecclesiastical unity could help us.”

The Enigma of Gregory the Great's Dialogues: A Response to Francis Clark

1988 ◽  
Vol 39 (3) ◽  
pp. 335-381 ◽  
Author(s):  
Paul Meyvaert
Keyword(s):  
Middle Ages ◽  
Church Fathers ◽  
Gregory The Great ◽  
The Reformation ◽  
The Church ◽  
The Middle Ages

The Middle Ages remained serenely unaware that a dark problem might attach itself some day to the Dialogues of Gregory the Great. They knew their Gregory, studied his Moralia and other scriptural commentaries with uplifted hearts, read his Dialogues with equal veneration and devotion and never perceived even the glimmer of a contradiction between the two categories of works. Then came the Reformation with its stress on Scripture and its dislike of the ‘superstitious Romanist piety’ fostered by works like the Dialogues. A problem thus arose for the Reformers. They had little love for the papacy but retained a veneration for the Church Fathers, among whom they counted Gregory the Great, that great interpreter of Scripture, who had been instrumental in bringing Christianity to England. Was it possible to retain Gregory but divest him of an embarrassing work? It is important to note that the first attempts to deny Gregory's authorship of the Dialogues are rooted in the polemics of the Reformation period.

Why the Reformation Occurred in Germany

1958 ◽  
Vol 27 (2) ◽  
pp. 99-106
Author(s):  
Gerhard Ritter
Keyword(s):  
Middle Ages ◽  
Reform Movements ◽  
The Reformation ◽  
The Church ◽  
The Middle Ages

At the end of the Middle Ages, the moral prestige of the old papal church was severely shaken in all the countries of Europe. Open criticism of its moral shortcomings and its organizational defects had been going on for centuries. To the diverse splinter-movements of heretical sects (which were never wholly suppressed) had been recently added the great reform movements of the Wyclifites and the Hussites. But even they had brought about no lasting and widespread upheaval. Ultimately the old hierarchy had always prevailed. Why then did the Germans, a people slow to be aroused, fond of order, and faithful to the church, take it upon themselves to carry out the most prodigious revolution in the church? And why did only their revolt against the papal church have such vast and enduring consequences?

scholarly journals Features of the Socio-Political and Theoretical Foundations of the Philosophical Understanding of Law from the Middle Ages to the Present

wisdom ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 19 (3) ◽  
pp. 204-216
Author(s):  
Volodymyr ORTYNSKYI ◽  
Stepan SLYVKA ◽  
Nadiya SCOTNA ◽  
Oksana LEVYTSKA ◽  
Ivanna SHCHERBAI
Keyword(s):  
Middle Ages ◽  
Scientific Article ◽  
Philosophy Of Law ◽  
Modern Times ◽  
The Enlightenment ◽  
The Law ◽  
Characteristic Features ◽  
Main Ideas ◽  
Philosophical Understanding ◽  
The Middle Ages

The article aims to study the genesis of the philosophical understanding of the law, from the Middle Ages to modern times. The reason for choosing such a significant period of time is that the purpose of the article is to trace the dynamics of understanding the philosophy of law. The methodological basis of this scientific article was formed by the most important approaches, methods and principles of historical research. A study was carried out on the genesis of philosophical understanding of the law, from the Middle Ages to modern times. The understanding of the philosophy of law in different eras of time was considered. In addition, the understanding of the philosophy of law during the Renaissance was examined in detail. The main ideas of law in the philosophical spins of the thinkers of the Enlightenment are considered. The characteristic features of the modern philosophy of law are determined.

scholarly journals Tien eeue leksikografie: Van woordelys tot woordeboek

1985 ◽  
Vol 41 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
Wouter C. Van Wyk
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
South African ◽  
Middle Ages ◽  
Biblical Hebrew ◽  
The Enlightenment ◽  
The Reformation ◽  
Vocabulary List ◽  
The Middle Ages

Ten centuries of lexicography: From vocabulary list to dictionary The aim of the article is to illuminate the development in the lexicography of Biblical Hebrew through ten centuries from the first vocabularly list to a dictionary based on linguistic, comparative Semitic and encyclopedic principles. The writer treats several stages through the Middle Ages, the Reformation period, the Enlightenment and the Twentieth century up to a contemporary project of South African scholars working on a new Semantic Hebrew 'wordbook'. The conclusion in the article is that the nature of a specific dictionary or vocabularly list, for example philological, theological or linguistic, serves particular, legitimate needs.

Lutheran and Catholic Reunionists in the Age of Bismarck

1969 ◽  
Vol 38 (1) ◽  
pp. 43-66 ◽  
Author(s):  
Manfred Fleischer
Keyword(s):  
Roman Empire ◽  
Middle Ages ◽  
Holy Roman Empire ◽  
National State ◽  
The Reformation ◽  
The Church ◽  
The Middle Ages

Religious division has determined Germany's destiny. In the Middle Ages, it was the struggle between Emperor and Pope which doomed the Holy Roman Empire. During the Reformation, and the Thirty Years' War, it was Protestantism as well as the anti-Imperial diplomacy of the Pope and the French cardinals, which prevented the emergence of a national state and a centralized government. “From the split of the church dates all our misfortune,” complained in 1846 the Lutheran historian Johann Friedrich Böhmer, editor of a major medieval source collection.

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