This article investigates the religious practice of suffering for others in the early Middle Ages. In proxy penance, one person completed a penitential work for another, who received the spiritual benefit. This practice was based on the idea that one person could stand in for another to bear his burden. Using penitential, conciliar, liturgical, and epistolary sources, I uncover two types of proxy penance. First, priests shared in the penance of those who confessed to them. Liturgical texts include Masses in which the priest completes the penance for someone who could not complete it himself. Penitential texts admonish the priest to “share in the foulness” with the sinner in order to bring about the remission of his sin. Second, there was both a promotion and a criticism of proxy fasting among the laity. This sic et non rhythm shows that early medieval penitential culture could not control the demand for proxy penance. Some attention is also paid to the practice of proxy penance in the eleventh-century monastic milieu of Peter Damian. This article broadens the scope of current scholarship on penance by focusing on its substitutionary ability. Also, this article explores the changing notions of and metaphors about sin in this period—from medical to economic—that fueled proxy activity.

Writing in the half-century after the “conversion” of Constantine, Bishop Hilary of Poitiers wrote two works regarding Emperor Constantius II. The first, Ad Constantium, is a polite and formal letter, seeking an audience with the emperor. The second, In Constantium, is a harangue against the emperor. Some scholars have proposed that the difference in tone between these two documents indicates that Hilary had come to advocate for the emperor to be completely uninvolved in the affairs of the Church. Closer analysis reveals that Hilary always endorsed a position in which the emperor should be involved in ecclesiastical affairs, so long as he submitted to the higher authorities of scripture and the ancient apostolic faith. Hilary would have had no concerns with a pro-Nicene emperor enforcing proto-orthodox church councils and creeds. Prior to Hilary, most of Christianity had accepted imperial involvement in the Church. But the involvement of the Roman emperors in ecclesial matters caused many to have to consider the problems of someone outside of the Church making decisions for the Church. Hilary's efforts stand as one of the first western attempts to nuance and limit the emperor's ecclesiastical role.

This article seeks to provide a new way of interpreting the Age of Reform and its legacy on the occasion of the Protestant Reformation's 500th anniversary. Over the past several decades, many scholars have interpreted the Age of Reform through the lens of a “Discipline Paradigm.” They have stressed the centrality of social and moral discipline in the Age of Reform and its legacy for the modern world. This paradigm has inspired much important and original scholarship, and yet it has also failed to take account of significant aspects of the Age of Reform. This article seeks to revise and challenge the “Discipline Paradigm” by focusing on one of the most important and widespread practices of the period: verbal consolation. There was an unprecedented flowering of such consolation in the Age of Reform and yet scholars have largely ignored it in their treatments of the period. This article seeks to demonstrate how viewing the Age of Reform as an Age of Consolation can provide important new insight into the character and legacy of the Age of Reform, and, indeed, into human existence in the past.

Purification of the Church is frequently invoked to narrate Protestant justifications for the break from Rome during the Reformation. It also functions to link the Reformation to a process of modern disenchantment. However, little attention has been paid to the rhetoric of pollution and precisely how the reformers articulated the dangers of polluted ritual. The historical location of the sources examined here is the middle decades of the 16th century when Protestants were dealing with political setbacks to the Reformation cause in the Holy Roman Empire, particularly the imposition of the Augsburg Interim by Charles V. This law was designed to find some middle ground between Catholics and Protestants until the schism would be settled at the Council of Trent. However, the debates about whether certain ceremonies, supposedly non-binding with respect to doctrinal commitments, could be used for politically expedient purposes, pushed Protestant thinkers to reassess the power and dangers of liturgical practices and paraphernalia. This article interprets the discourse of pollution in Protestant controversies about compromise in ritual matters by treating the responses of two theologians writing against the Interim from different parts of Germany: Joachim Westphal and Wolfgang Musculus. By laying out the causes of ritual pollution and its negative effects upon body and soul according to individuals who worked for reform in both their intellectual activity as well as their pastoral service, this article demonstrates the importance of ritual matters for Protestant moral thought.

This essay surveys the ways the attitudes of Piccolomini and Cusa toward the initiation of a crusade were shaped by their shifting allegiances between 1432 and their deaths in 1464. Piccolomini's developing interest in crusade, which became his central concern during his reign as pope, is traced through his years at Basel and in the service of Frederick III. Cusa's attitude toward crusade is approached in terms of the apparent contradiction between the views set out in his De pace fidei and the role that he played at imperial diets in the 1440s and 1450s. In the case of both men, the impact of the fall of Constantinople in 1453 is reassessed.

Throughout the history of printing, questions of design have been crucial to the development of the book industry. This is especially the case with the development of the title page, the most crucial design feature for which there was no obvious model inherited from the manuscript book world. The Reformation both revolutionized the market for books and stimulated crucial innovations in the design and selling of books. This began in Wittenberg, where the partnership of Martin Luther and Lucas Cranach played a critical role in shaping the Reformation pamphlet. In lands more hostile to the Reformation, the design task was more complex, since design features intended to facilitate identification could place the seller or owner in deadly danger. This essay concludes with an examination of the market for devotional literature in the Dutch Republic, the home to Europe's most buoyant center of book production.

Despite the demarcations of the political and religious spheres, Heinrich Bullinger (1504–1575) considered the city's system of poor relief to be a pastoral concern. The chief minister of Zurich expected the wealth from confiscated church property to be used for communal needs and believed that the magistrates needed the ministers to guide them in poor relief reforms. This article demonstrates that Bullinger's biblical interpretation was not peripheral to his political activity, but rather central to his contributions to poor relief and to the justification of his political involvement in poor relief reform. More specifically, Bullinger's involvement in poor relief reform was a consistent development from his articulation of his theological views in the 1530s, applied to the Zurich context in the 1550s, and politically supported in the 1570s. An examination of Bullinger's biblical interpretation and scriptural references in his commentaries, sermons, and speeches reveals a consistent concern for the care of the poor from the early years of his career to the end of his ministry in Zurich.

An analysis of Calvin's multifaceted use of the Roman-Jewish historian Josephus reveals several things of importance both for scholarship on Renaissance historical and biblical criticism generally, and for Calvin studies in particular. Calvin's reception of Josephus was quite extraordinary in its breadth, and complex in its employment and function. References to the historian are peppered throughout his works in a wide array of contexts, from the special authority of Moses to the length of the Sea of Galilee. Significantly, Calvin not only used Josephus as a source for raw historical data, but also employed him to philosophical, theological, and political ends as well. And while the reformer is not unequivocally positive in his judgment of the historian as a reliable source, an overwhelming majority of the instances where Calvin cites Josephus's texts are used to augment his exegetical works, and at times Josephus's authority comes close to overriding that of the literal biblical account. The purpose of this paper is to show how Calvin's engagement with Josephus in his commentaries reveals him to have been an able and discerning critic who would at times go to great lengths in order to sort out perceived discrepancies or to fill in historiographical lacunae pertinent to the biblical story, but also an opportunistic humanist who would use whatever resources he had at his disposal for clarifying the historical background of the biblical text.

Tertullian is widely regarded as having originated the expression Credo quia absurdum (est) (I believe because it is absurd) and the phrase often appears in contemporary polemics about the rationality of religious belief. Patristic scholars have long pointed out that Tertullian never said this or meant anything like it. However, little scholarly attention has been paid to the circumstances in which this specific phrase came into existence and why, in spite of its dubious provenance, it continues to be regarded by many as a legitimate characterization of religious faith. This paper shows how Tertullian's original expression—“It is certain, because impossible”—was first misrepresented and modified in the early modern period. In seventeenth century England a “credo” version—I believe because it is impossible—became the common form of Tertullian's maxim. A further modification, building on the first, was effected by the Enlightenment philosophe Voltaire, who added the “absurdity condition” and gave us the modern version of the paradox: I believe because it is absurd. These modifications played a significant role in Enlightenment representations of religion as irrational, and signal the beginning of a new understanding of faith as an epistemic vice. This doubtful maxim continues to play a role in debates about the cognitive status of religious faith, and its failure to succumb to the historical evidence against it is owing to its ongoing rhetorical usefulness in such debates.

Chocolate has early associations in the West with Spanish Catholic missionaries to America. From the middle of the sixteenth century, chocolate was employed in many useful ways, including economic capacities. However, till now, there have been no associations with the liquid drink and financial survival during and after periods of war or revolution. Yet during the Napoleonic years (1798–1814), chocolate was employed to support certain impoverished Italian clerics during the leanest years of the period. Leading one of these initiatives was Mauro Cappellari, the future Pope Gregory XVI (r. 1831–1846), who, along with others in his Camaldolese order, produced and retailed the chocolate throughout Italian lands. This article draws on Italian archival materials in Rome and Camaldoli in order to piece together this hitherto overlooked food enterprise. In addition, this article will also reveal much about the chocolate trade and production in Italian lands in general.

Hans Holbein the Younger produced a large corpus of illustrations that appeared in an astonishing variety of Bibles, including Latin Vulgate editions, Desiderius Erasmus's Greek New Testament, rival German translations by Martin Luther and Ulrich Zwingli, the English Coverdale Bible, as well as in Holbein's profoundly influential Icones veteris testamenti (Images of the Old Testament)—to name only his better-known contributions. This essay discusses strategies that the artist developed for accommodating the heterogeneity of the various humanist and Reformation Bibles. For Erasmus's innovative Bibles, Holbein connected the text to the expansive concept of Renaissance humanist art, simultaneously portraying the new Bible and humanist art as part of a broadly defined cultural-philosophical discourse. Similarly, Holbein's production of Protestant Bibles, most importantly the epochal Luther Bible, associated the new text with the humanist Bible and, in so doing, conceptualized the humanist biblical image as a validation of religious art in a new context. Ultimately, the reliance on humanist art as a cultural authority mitigated perception of the heterogeneity of the text to the point that the publishers of Holbein's Icones completely displaced the text with the daring creation of a new genre: the picture Bible. With the exception of the iconography of royal supremacy in England, Holbein's Bible image was exceedingly movable, an artistic efficiency designed to contribute to the stability of the Bible image across a wide humanist and multiconfessional spectrum.

Huguenot suffering inspired fast days, prayer meetings, and collections among Congregationalists in Massachusetts and Plymouth in the 1680s. Ministers used a variety of frameworks to motivate compassion for the French refugees. Some preachers considered the French plight to be the result of an Antichristian attack, one that might soon spread to New England. Others assumed Huguenot suffering generally was a result of their sinful neglect of the Sabbath, and that compassion and honor should extend to those who suffered cheerfully while upholding disciplined purity. As suspicions mounted that there were French Catholic spies within the refugee communities and local harassment increased, the prominent Huguenot minister Ezekiel Carré advocated an alternate framework for Christian charity. In his remarkable sermon, The Charitable Samaritan, Carré shifted the meaning of charity from an apocalyptic framework to one centered on active mercy for the wounded regardless of sect or nationality. A friend of Carré’s and Huguenot supporter, Cotton Mather incorporated Carré’s interpretation of the Samaritan story into his magisterial Bible commentary. Though always contested, Huguenot practices and rhetoric broadened the conversation over the meaning of charity in early New England.

At the beginning of James I's reign, a petition campaign, the Hampton Court conference, numerous tracts, and considerable effort in Parliament all failed to overcome the king's adamant defense of the forms and practices of his episcopal church. In a milieu of deprivations and perception of declension, Henry Jacob, one of the organizers of the petitioning, denounced the illegitimacy and dangers of prelatical church government in several tracts between 1604 and 1609, advocated congregationalism, and outlined the basis for a second conference to bring continuing religious disputes to a close. In 1609, having achieved no success, Jacob turned away from scriptural arguments for reform and instead boldly adopted the novel reason-of-state political language to request “toleration” for politically loyal nonconforming Protestants. Jacob relied on “axioms of pollicie” and recent examples to demonstrate that necessity sometimes determined that toleration, while unpalatable, was the most prudent political course (as the new language had it). James's handwritten marginalia on this tract reveal his continuing antipathy toward any reform he believed derogated from his monarchical “interest.” The variety of arguments Jacob employed illustrates both the difficulties facing early Jacobean reformers and the often-unrecognized degree of flexibility and development in their thought and tactics. In asking for toleration as a royal favor, Jacob also illustrates the seventeenth-century nonconformist dilemma of achieving desired ends through doubtful means.

This essay examines how the Lutheran Reformation changed church spaces in the Danish kingdom after 1536—the official year of Reformation in Denmark. Rather than addressing the long-term consequences of the Reformation, the essay demonstrates how the ideas of the first and second generation of reformers came to be expressed in churches; that is, how the reception of Lutheran thinking was materialized in church interiors prior to what is commonly known as the period of Lutheran orthodoxy. This early period of change, spanning the second half of the sixteenth century, is particularly fickle and difficult to grasp, not only because many of the first Lutheran Church fittings were replaced in later centuries, but also because the speed at which the new religious ideals found their way into churches varied greatly from region to region. Nevertheless, certain trends emerged that are still evident today. While these short-lived, idealistic attempts at a new evangelical church interior failed as a whole, they nevertheless left a pronounced impact on the churches in general.

A century ago, the mite box (penny collection box) was ubiquitous in North America as a religious fundraising tool, especially for women and children. Using the Methodist Woman's Foreign Missionary Society as a case study, I ask what these boxes reveal about the intersection of gender, consumerism, and capitalism from circa 1870–1930. By cutting across traditional Weberian and Marxist analyses, the discussion engages a more complex understanding of religion and capital that includes emotional attachments and material sensations. In particular, I argue that mite boxes clarify how systematic giving was institutionalized through practices that created an imaginative bridge between the immediacy of a sensory experience and the projections of social policies and prayers. They also demonstrate how objects became physical points of connection that materialized relationships that were meant to be present, but were not tangible. Last, they demonstrate the continued salience of older Christian ideas about blessings and sacrifice, even in an era normally associated with the secularization of market capitalism and philanthropy.

This article looks at confessional family resemblances between the fundamentalist controversy in the Presbyterian Church in the United States of America and the church union controversy in Canada. These resemblances have been obscured by focusing on the doctrinal dimensions of the former and the socio-institutional features of the latter. The role of the prominent American fundamentalist J. Gresham Machen in the transformation of Canadian unionists into modernists sheds light on the underlying tensions that sparked the two controversies, as well as the distinctive dynamics of the resistance to church union that shaped the confessional identity of both the Presbyterian Church in Canada and the United Church of Canada after 1925.

In 1909, the philosopher Arthur Drews unleashed a brief but furious debate when he published Die Christusmythe, in which he denied the historicity of Jesus Christ. This article seeks to understand the origin and significance of the “Christ Myth” controversy, focusing not simply on its scholarly content, but also on the historical contexts in which it unfolded, in particular the increasingly public and popular nature of theological debate in late Wilhelmine Germany. The article examines Drews's long-standing commitment to a monist religious philosophy inspired by his mentor Eduard von Hartmann, as well as his decision to intervene in the increasingly contentious debate around Protestant liberal theology's view of the “historical Jesus.” It also describes Drews's campaign to spread his views to a broader public through a series of lectures and debates, many of which were organized and promoted by the German Monist League. Although the actual theses of Die Christusmythe were not particularly original or well argued, the ensuing controversy placed Protestant liberal theology in a difficult position, which opponents were quick to exploit. While a wide range of Protestant theologians attempted to refute Drews, others moved away from a reliance on the historical Jesus. This shift was in part a response to intellectual difficulties in liberal theology that Drews helped expose, but it can also be seen as a reaction to the unseemly spectacle of university professors defending themselves against autodidacts and dilettantes, a situation that led some theologians to ground their positions on intellectual terrain less susceptible to such attacks.

Luther's student Johann Mathesius, longtime pastor in the Bohemian mining town of Joachimsthal, provides a lens for seeing early modern art and artists through Lutheran eyes, challenging modern interpretations of the dire consequences of the Reformation for the visual arts.1 For Mathesius, pre-Reformation art provided not only evidence of old idolatry but also testimony to the preservation of Evangelical faith under the papacy. After the Reformation, Joachimsthal's Lutherans were active in commissioning new works of art to fill the first newly built Protestant church, including an altarpiece from Lucas Cranach's workshop. Mathesius's appreciation of this art includes not only its biblical and doctrinal content but also its aesthetic quality. In an extended sermon on the construction of the Tabernacle in Exodus 31, Mathesius draws on Luther's theology of the special inspiration of the “great men” of world history to develop a Lutheran theology of artistic inspiration, in which artists are endowed by the Holy Spirit with extraordinary skills and special creative gifts, intended to be used in service of the neighbor by adorning the divinely appointed estates of government, church, and household.

According to historiographical convention, the experience of exile by Protestants from the Habsburg Netherlands between the 1550s and the early 1570s played a critical role in promoting confessional Calvinism in the early Dutch Republic. But there are too many problems in the evidentiary basis to sustain this conclusion. This essay traces the historiography on the Dutch Reformation in order to isolate where and why this idea emerged. It demonstrates that no specific role for religious refugees in the development of Dutch Calvinism can be found in historical writing from the late sixteenth to the mid-nineteenth century. Only in the late nineteenth century, during a debate about the role of the Dutch Reformed Church in the Netherlands, did the experiences of religious refugees come to take on a specific role in explaining the development of Dutch Calvinism. The idea first emerged among Neo-Calvinists who critiqued state supervision of their church. By the twentieth century, it came to be used by orthodox and moderate Reformed Protestants, as well as liberal and secular academic historians. This paper thus demonstrates that this key interpretive framework for understanding the Dutch Reformation was the product not of developments in the sixteenth-century Habsburg Netherlands, but of religious politics in the Kingdom of the Netherlands in the late nineteenth century.