Maintaining the Common Peace: Security and the Religious Peace of 1578 during the Dutch Revolt

This article analyses the failed Dutch Religious Peace of 1578 through the lens of security. As Wayne te Brake recently argued in Religious War and Religious Peace in Early Modern Europe, creating security for all parties is key for an effective religious peace. In the sixteenth century, communal security was deemed a collective responsibility. In practice this meant that religious peace – suppressing and preventing violence and threats between Protestants and Catholics – was framed as a matter of preserving the common peace. Theological questions were dissimulated or kept out of peace settlements. In 1578, the religious peace proposed that Catholics and Calvinists were to live in the Netherlands side by side, each allowed to worship publicly. Some 27 Dutch towns introduced this religious peace. Yet the municipal magistrates mostly did so reluctantly and generally declined to share political power, thus contributing to its failure. Moreover, there were different, conflicting conceptions at work concerning the common peace, as well as regarding how to keep it.

Conciliar Infallibility and Error in the Thomistic Ecclesiology of St. Robert Bellarmine, S.J.

In the sixteenth century, St. Robert Bellarmine (1542–1621) in his Disputationes de controversiis Christianae fidei adversus huius temporis haereticos defended the authority of the conciliar magisterium. Bellarmine, like other sixteenth-century Thomists, held that there were conditions under which God necessarily protects a general council from teaching error, but he did not deny that councils can and have erred. This article explains Bellarmine’s classification of the different types of councils. It also examines the conditions under which he believes that God necessarily protects a council from teaching error. It then discusses Bellarmine’s teaching on what kinds of councils can err and under what conditions a council can do so. Finally, the article will discuss his historical examination of various alleged conciliar errors.

Teaching Romans 7 after Trent: Michael Baius and his Lecture Hall on Concupiscence and Original Sin in Early Modern Louvain (1552–1589)

This article introduces a new corpus of sources relevant to the sixteenth-century Baianist controversy at the University of Louvain: student notes made during Michael Baius’ lectures on the Bible during the 1560s. The commentary on Romans 7 taught by the Royal Professor of Sacred Scripture contains a discussion on the sinfulness of concupiscence, the effect of the Fall driving humankind to sin. A contested concept between Catholics and Protestants, the nature of concupiscentia also lies at the core of debates on the orthodoxy of Baius’ justification theology, both early modern and more recent. The professor’s lecture on Romans 7 is analysed against his published treatises, the censures (1565–1567) and papal bull (1567) condemning certain propositions as heretical, and the Tridentine Decree on Original Sin (1546). While Baius’ Augustinian revaluation of humanity’s wounded nature (natura viciata) moved away from the Thomistic conception of concupiscence as innate, but disordered, he did respect the boundaries set by the Council of Trent. Indeed, Baius taught his positive theology in the interstices between the educational application of the Tridentine Decrees and the gradual assertion of dominance by a renewed Thomism in Catholic orthodoxy. I argue that such a historical reading of Baius’ ideas is the key to avoid the earlier dogmatic assessments of his theology.

The Doctrine of Justification in the Neo-Latin Biblical Poetry of Silesian Reformation Poets and their Interpretation of the Biblical Theme of the Fall of the First Parents

The aim of this article is to analyze a selection of works by Silesian Protestants who, in poetic form, explained the biblical theme of the fall of the first parents in the context of the Reformation teaching on justification. The article consists of three parts. The first gives a short presentation of the literary phenomenon of neo-Latin poetic alterations of various books, fragments, and biblical themes by Silesian poets who were active in this literary field from the mid-sixteenth century to the mid-seventeenth century. The scale, area and time frame of the mass distribution of this literature are presented here, and it is noted that it was created as a result of the cultural and educational influence of the leading teacher of the Lutheran Reformation, viz. Philip Melanchthon. The second part of the article provides a theological explanation of the biblical story of the fall of the first parents, or original sin, in the context of the doctrine of justification as interpreted by Martin Luther, Philip Melanchthon, Huldrych Zwingli, and John Calvin. The third part discusses how some Silesian poets like Thomas Mawer (1536–1575), Laurentius Fabricius (1539–1577), Melchior Ostius (1569–1637) and Fridericus Wolbertus (active at the turn of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries) presented the doctrine of justification in poems describing the fall of Adam and Eve. The conclusions emphasize the importance of this type of work for the spread of the Reformation doctrine of justification, which opened the peaceful path to ideological and religious discussions in Central and Eastern Europe at that time.

Reforming the Holy Name: The Afterlife of the IHS in Early Modern England

This article challenges the prevailing understanding of the Holy Name of Jesus as largely a Roman Catholic representation in early modern England. Although the Holy Name was attacked intermittently by Protestant iconoclasts, the article uses both visual and literary texts to set out a more nuanced relationship between the symbol and the broader religious culture of the period. As a symbol, the IHS served as a polysemous representation in a period of religious turmoil, creating not only multiple meanings but also multiple contexts in which the symbol could be found. The article both addresses the reasons why scholars tend to see the IHS as a particularly Catholic symbol and demonstrates the continued importance of the Holy Name in Protestant devotion.

Sebastian Münster and his Sources: The Messiah in Rome and the Convergence of Christian-Jewish Polemic and Intra-Christian Conflict

The Talmudic story of an encounter between Rabbi Joshua ben Levi and the Messiah at the gate of Rome served medieval Christians well in their polemics against the Jews. This was, it seemed, a Jewish affirmation of the truth of Christianity: not only did the legend indicate that the Messiah had already come, it also placed him in Rome, the epicenter of the Christian faith. For that very reason, however, later Protestant polemicists could hardly be expected to utilize the story correspondingly, not after rejecting the primacy of Rome. This article considers a number of Protestant responses to the Jewish Messiah in Rome tradition. Its primary focus, though, is on two anti-Jewish treatises by Sebastian Münster. As Stephen G. Burnett has demonstrated, Münster’s texts draw heavily from pre-Reformation polemical works – in other words, works that accepted Rome’s preeminence; the present article argues that Münster managed to subtly convey his own Protestant sensitivities in discussing the Joshua b. Levi story, all the same. This close reading of Münster offers a unique perspective on the convergence of Christian-Jewish controversy and Protestant-Catholic tensions, and especially on the role and development of the former in light of the latter.

Von Rossen und Wagen: Das Verhältnis von Stadt und Land in der Ulmer Reformation

This essay addresses the question of how the city and its territory (Umland) were related in the reformation process. Its object of investigation is the imperial city of Ulm which owned one of the largest territories. The assumption that in the reformation process the city was the outrider and the territory followed proves adequate only at first view. A closer look shows some more complex dynamics. Whereas reformation preaching indeed did spread from the city into the territory, the practice of a reformed eucharist started at the edges of the territory. After the official introduction of the reformation in 1531 the territory played an important role concerning reformatory diversity. It served the city as religious experiment space and storage room.

Das Corpus Doctrinae Philippicum und seine Nachwirkung

Hardly any corpus doctrinae had as intensive a reception and as wide a dissemination as the Corpus Doctrinae Philippicum (1560). Situating it in the history of the concept of a corpus doctrinae and briefly sketching its origin and goal elucidate the function and significance of this collection of Melanchthon’s writings. An intensive investigation reveals however any connection of this work with the development of the Reformation in Siebenbürgen (ung. Erdély, rum. Transilvania) in the later 16th century. The records of the Siebenbürgen synods mention the Corpus Doctrinae Philippicum occasionally, revealing the extent to which it served as a norm for public teaching. Unique and characteristic for Siebenbürgen is that the Formula of Concord (1577) did not replace this Corpus Doctrinae; it remained influential long into the seventeenth century. It was however interpreted within the horizon of a Wittenberg theology that was marked by the pre-confessional harmony and doctrinal agreement between Luther and Melanchthon while seeking to ignore Philippist interpretations and focusing on the common teachings of both reformers.

Der erste evangelische Superintendent in Siebenbürgen Paul Wiener (1495–1554): eine Brücke zwischen Laibach, Wien und Hermannstadt

The article is dedicated to the theologian Paul Wiener, a native of Carniola, who after his studies achieved a remarkable ecclesiastical career and turned into the most influential Church figure in Ljubljana. Under the influence of his colleague Truber, he was won over to the theological concerns of the Reformation, but was arrested by the Catholic ruler in 1546 for his Reformation stance. Under interrogation, he refused the suggested recantation and wrote instead a defense, which was considered a “complete apology of the Reformation” and referred to throughout Luther’s main Reformation writings. The trial ended with Wiener’s pardon, but he was exiled to Transylvania, where he was appointed preacher and town pastor. Elected the first superintendent of the Transylvanian Lutheran Church in 1553, he displayed a Wittenberg-oriented theology and ministry, especially in ordinations, where he placed the greatest emphasis on the Confessio Augustana. His Church leadership was, however, limited, as he died of the plague in 1554.