Hostname: page-component-586b7cd67f-t7fkt Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-29T05:31:36.739Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Late Mediaeval Piety, Humanism and Luther’s Theology

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  21 March 2016

George Yule
George Yule*
Affiliation:
King’s College Aberdeen
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Extract

In his essay The origins of the French Reformation, Lucien Febvre exposes a number of weaknesses in common interpretations of the Reformation—that it had been brought about because of abuses in the church and especially because of Luther’s anger at these abuses. But what, asked Febvre, does one then make of those independently of Luther, who like Briconnet, bishop of Meaux, worked for reforms, often of a different kind to those advocated by Luther, or more especially of Lefèvre d’Étaples a mystical catholic whose biblical studies says Febvre ‘contained some very bold things’. So Febvre asked could this many sided movement ‘spring from nothing more than a revolt of healthy and honest minds and consciences against the nasty people and wicked spectacles around them?’ Why could not the ‘many pious Christians often supported by their princes and the officers of the princes put an end to the excesses which everyone deplored? No one noticed that if the Reformation in France had originated with Lefèvre and not with Luther the abuses theory would no longer be valid ... for Lefèvre had never campaigned against the morals of the clergy’. Febvre then went on to point out the evidence for the deep and increasing piety of the early sixteenth century in northern Europe—the many new churches and oratories, the deep sentiment attached to the Christ of the Passion and the Virgin of the Rosary.

Type
Research Article
Information
Studies in Church History , Volume 17: Religion and Humanism , 1981 , pp. 167 - 180
Copyright
Copyright © Ecclesiastical History Society 1981

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

1 Febvre, Lucien, ‘The Origins of the French Reformation’ in A New Kind of History, ed Burke, Peter, (Harper Torchback 1973) p 55 Google Scholar.

2 Ibid p 56.

3 Ibid p 61.

4 Ibid p 67.

5 Ibid p 75.

6 Quoted C. Dawson The Making of Europe, (1939), p 110.

7 Luther, , ‘The Bondage of the Will’, in Erasmus and Luther, (Library of Christian Classics), P 333 Google Scholar.

8 Febvre, Lucien, Revue Historique, CLXI (1929), p 39 Google Scholar.

9 Toussaert, Jacques, Le sentiment religieux en Flandre à ¡afin du Moyen-Age, (Paris 1963) p 223 Google Scholar.

10 Delaruelle, Etienne, L’Eglise au temps du Grand Schisme et la crise conciliaire (1378-1449), (Paris 1964), p 761 Google Scholar, quoted in Ozment, S., The Reformation in the Cities (Yale 1975), p 20 Google Scholar.

11 ‘Bernd Moeller ‘Religious Life in Germany on the Eve of the Reformation’ in Pre-Reformation Germany, ed Strauss, G. (Harper 1972), p 15 CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

12 Quoted ibid.

13 Quoted in J. Huizinga, The Waning of the Middle Ages (1924), p 24. He composed a dozen others in a similar vein, all of which were popular.

14 Moeller. op. cit. p 16.

15 Quoted in S. Ozment, The Reformation in the Cities, p 25.

16 Moeller, op. cit. p 22.

17 Douglas, E. J. Dempsey, Justification in Late Mediaeval Preaching (Leiden 1966), p 134 Google Scholar.

18 Ibid p 154.

19 The term is inevitably imprecise. Almost all the humanists were Christian but had other major preoccupations. So the term should be applied to those humanists who saw Christianity as the key stone for interpreting the life of man.

20 Spitz, L. W., The Religious Renaissance of the German Humanists, (Harvard 1963), p 103 CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

21 Aldridge, J. W., The Hermeneutics of Erasmus, (Richard Virginia 1966), p 27 Google Scholar.

22 Ibid.

23 Erasmus, , ‘In Praise of Folly’, in The Essential Erasmus, ed Dolan, J.P, (Mentor-Omega books 1964), p 143 Google Scholar.

24 Trinkhaus, Charles, ‘The Religious Thought of the Italian Humanists and the Reformers’, in The Pursuit of Holiness, ed Trinkhaus, C. and Oberman, H., (Leiden 1974) p 359 Google Scholar.

25 L. W. Spitz, The Religious Renaissance of the German Humanists, p 112.

26 Kristeller, P. O., Renaissance Thought, (Harper Torchback 1961), p 78 Google Scholar.

27 Trinkhaus, C., In Our Image and Likeness —Humanity and Divinity in Italian Renaissance Thought (1970), i p 126 Google Scholar.

28 Ibid, ii p 561. On this issue see also Bouwsma, W. J., ‘Renaissance and Reformation’ in Luther and the Dawn of the Modern Era, ed Oberman, H., (Leiden 1974), pp 135-39Google Scholar.

29 Trinkhaus, ‘The Religious Thought of the Italian Humanists’ p 360.

30 Kristeller, Renaissance Thought, p 106.

31 Erasmus ‘Enchiridion’ in The Essential Erasmus, p 36.

32 Ibid p 37.

33 Advocates of Reform, ed Spinka, Mathew, (Library of Christian Classics), Vol 14, p 289 Google Scholar.

34 Luther ‘Commentary on Romans’ 7:6, LW, 25 p 327.

35 Peter Brown, Augustine of Hippo, (1973) pp 372-75.

36 Luther. ‘Commentary on Romans’, 8:3. Quoted E. G. Rupp, The Righteousness of God, (1953) p 165.

37 Boehmer, H., Road to Reformation, ET, Doberstein, J. W. and Tappert, T. (Philadelphia 1946), 107 Google Scholar.

38 Ullmann, W., A History of Political Thought: The Middle Ages, (Penguin 1965) pp 21 Google Scholarff.

39 Luther, ‘Lectures on the Galatians’, (1535), 5:3, LW, 27 p 13.

40 LW 31 p 367.

41 Oberman, H. ‘Iustia Christi and Iustitia Dei’ in Harvard Theological Review, 59, 1966, PP 3–5 Google Scholar.

42 Quoted Ibid, p 6.

43 Ibid, pp 12-15 and 19-20.

44 Quoted in Strauss, G., Nuremburg in the 16th Century (New York 1966), p 168 Google Scholar.

45 L. Febvre, ‘The Origins of the French Reformation’, p 61.

46 G. Ebling, Luther, ET, R. A. Wilson, (1970), cap 1.

47 ‘The Seven Penitential Psalms’ LW, 14 p 204.

48 Luther, , ‘Commentary on Romans’, 7:6, LW, 25 p 327 Google Scholar.