History 2312: Religious Reformation and Popular Piety, 1450-1650

History 2312: Religious Reformation and Popular Piety, 1450-1650

This course examines the sweeping changes in religious life in Europe between the late Middle Ages and the seventeenth century. It concentrates on the upheavals associated with the Protestant and Catholic Reformations (the latter known also as the Counter-Reformation), but places these in a much broader context, examining the role of religion in the social, cultural, and political world of early modern Europe. The course does not treat religious issues solely in theological or ecclesiastic terms, but also in terms of piety – the `varieties of religious experience’ Europeans had, and community – the social and spiritual bonds formed by religion. It pays attention to the `common folk’ as much as to famous leaders, and looks for long-term shifts behind the era’s revolutionary events.

The course has no formal prerequisites, but students will be assumed to have taken the UCL History Department’s Lecture Core Course (`From the Ancient Near East to the Twenty-First Century’) or to have equivalent background knowledge of early modern Europe. Please consult the instructor if you have questions or concerns on this score.

1. 
   all of the core readings: these usually include a pertinent chapter from a textbook or handbook, for orientation. Most core readings, though, are primary source documents. They are of short- to moderate-length but require close analysis. All students will be expected to have read these items in time to discuss them at the appropriate essay class. At the first meeting of the course, the instructor will explain where these core readings can be found.
   

2. 
   some of the further readings: for each week there is also a list of further readings, which offers a selection of relevant secondary works, some recent, some classic, to be found in the UCL Library and/or other library collections in Bloomsbury. Which of these works you read each week is your choice, and a matter of library availability. The lists will also be of use to you in writing your coursework essays.
   

If you find you need more general background than is provided in the assigned readings, or detailed explanations of specifics (e.g. theological concepts, or events in a particular country), see Section IV below for a list of useful textbooks, reference works, and other general works.

For students who attend for the whole year, the course will be assessed by two essays (25%) and one three-hour written examination paper (75%). You must achieve a pass in both your coursework and your examination in order to pass the course.

Coursework essays must be c.2,500 words each (including footnotes/endnotes but excluding bibliography). A list of possible topics for each essay will be distributed at least a month in advance of the deadline for submission.

Unless otherwise stated above, your work must be submitted on Moodle/Turn-it-in by 12.00 noon BST on deadline day. Two hard copies with coversheet must also be submitted directly into the course tutor’s pigeonhole within 24 hours of the deadline. Please follow the guidelines on submission procedures on the departmental website at www.ucl.ac.uk/history, under ‘Undergraduates’.

Euan Cameron, The European Reformation (Oxford, 1991)

Steven Ozment, The Age of Reform 1250-1550 (New Haven, 1980)

Diarmaid MacCulloch, Reformation: Europe’s house divided, 1490-1700 (London, 2003)

Ulinka Rublack, Reformation Europe (Cambridge, 2005)

Patrick Collinson, The Reformation (London, 2003)

Hans J. Hillerbrand, Historical Dictionary of the Reformation and Counter-Reformation (London, 2000)

Hans J. Hillerbrand, ed., The Encyclopedia of Protestantism (London, 2004)

The New Catholic Encyclopedia (2^nd ed., Detroit/Washington, 2003)

Peter G. Bietenholz, ed., Contemporaries of Erasmus: a biographical register of the Renaissance and Reformation (Toronto, 1985-87)

David M. Whitford, Reformation and Early Modern Europe: A Guide to Research (Kirksville, Mo., 2008)

Steven Ozment, ed., Reformation Europe: A Guide to Research (St. Louis, 1982)

William Maltby, ed., Reformation Europe: A Guide to Research II (St. Louis, 1992)

John W. O'Malley, ed., Catholicism in Early Modern History: A Guide to Research (St. Louis, 1988)

Anne Jacobson Schutte et al., eds., Reformation Research in Europe and North America: A Historical Assessment (vol. 100 of the Archive of Reformation History) (2009)

Annual Literature Supplement of the Archiv für Reformationsgeschichte/Archive of Reformation History

Philip Benedict. "Between Whig Traditions and New Histories: American Historical Writing about Reformation and Early Modern Europe." In Imagined Histories: American Historians Interpret the Past, ed. Anthony Molho and Gordon S. Wood, 295-323. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1998.

A.G. Dickens and John Tonkin, The Reformation in Historical Thought (Cambridge, Mass., 1985)

John O’Malley, Trent and All That: Renaming Catholicism in the Early Modern Era (Cambridge, Mass., 2000)

Thomas A. Brady Jr., German Histories in the Age of Reformations, 1400-1650 (Cambridge, 2009)

Andrew Pettegree, ed., The Early Reformation in Europe (Cambridge, 1992)

Bob Scribner, Roy Porter, & Mikulas Teich, eds., The Reformation in National Context (Cambridge, 1994)

Andrew Pettegree, ed., The Reformation World (London, 2000)

R. Po-chia Hsia, ed., A Companion to the Reformation World (Oxford, 2004)

Alec Ryrie, ed., The European Reformations (2006)

Mark Greengrass, The Longman Companion to the European Reformation, c. 1500-1618 (London, 1998)

John Bossy, Christianity in the West, 1400-1700 (Oxford, 1985)

C. Scott Dixon, ed., The German Reformation: The Essential Readings (Oxford, 1999)

Theology
Alister McGrath, Reformation Thought: An Introduction (2^nd ed. Oxford, 1993)

Bernard Reardon, Religious Thought in the Reformation (2^nd ed. London, 1995)

Jaroslav Pelikan, The Christian Tradition: A History of the Development of Doctrine, vol. 4: Reformation of church and dogma (1300-1700) (Chicago, 1984-9)

Carter Lindberg, ed., The Reformation Theologians: An Introduction to Theology in the Early Modern Period (Oxford, 2002)

David Bagchi and David C. Steinmetz, eds., The Cambridge Companion to Reformation Theology (Cambridge, 2004)

The Catholic/Counter-Reformation
Mullett, Michael A. The Catholic Reformation (London, 1999)

Hsia, R. Po-Chia. The World of Catholic Renewal, 1540-1770 (2^nd ed. Cambridge, 2005)

Bireley, Robert. The refashioning of Catholicism, 1450-1700 (Washington, D.C., 1999)

Dickens, A.G. The Counter Reformation (London, 1968)

Martin Jones, The Counter Reformation: Religion and Society in Early Modern Europe (Cambridge, 1995)

Jean Delumeau, Catholicism Between Luther and Voltaire (London, 1977)

David Luebke, ed., The Counter-Reformation: The Essential Readings (Oxford, 1999)


Early Modern Europe (for background)
Merry Wiesner-Hanks, Early Modern Europe (Cambridge, 2006)

Beat Kümin, ed., The European World 1500-1800: An Introduction to Early Modern History (London, 2009)

Thomas Brady Jr., Heiko Oberman, & James Tracy, eds., Handbook of European History, 1400-1600, 2 vols. (Leiden, 1994-5)

Euan Cameron, ed., Early Modern Europe: An Oxford History (Oxford, 1999)

Eugene F. Rice, Jr. and Anthony Grafton, The Foundations of Early Modern Europe, 1460-1559 (2^nd ed. London, 1994)

Richard Dunn, The Age of Religious Wars, 1559-1715 (2^nd ed. London, 1979)

George Huppert, After the Black Death: A Social History of Early Modern Europe (2^nd ed. Bloomington, 1998)

Specialized Journals
Archive of Reformation History/Archiv für Reformationsgeschichte

The Sixteenth Century Journal

Journal of Ecclesiastical History

Church History

Church History and Religious Culture

Reformation

Online Resources (to be used with caution!)
Christian Classics Ethereal Library: http://www.ccel.org/

The Latin Library – Christian Latin: http://www.thelatinlibrary.com/christian.html

IntraText: http://www.intratext.com/

Project Wittenberg (Lutheran texts): http://www.iclnet.org/pub/resources/text/wittenberg/wittenberg-home.html

Internet Modern History Sourcebook – Reformation Europe: http://www.fordham.edu/halsall/mod/modsbook02.html

Le Projet Albion – The English Reformation: http://puritanism.online.fr/engref.html

Project Gutenberg: http://www.gutenberg.org/wiki/Main_Page

Hanover College Internet Archive of Texts and Documents: http://history.hanover.edu/early/prot.html (sections on Protestant and Catholic Reformations)

Catholic Encyclopedia: http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/index.html

Calvin Bibliography 1997: http://www.calvin.edu/meeter/bibliography/1997.htm

V. Schedule of Classes & Readings

The following abbreviations are used:

EEBO Early English Books Online: available via UCL Metalib at: http://metalib-a.lib.ucl.ac.uk/V/?func=find-db-1-category&mode=category&category=Arts%20and%20Humanities%20%28general%29&sub_cat=E-book%20collections&format=001&restricted=all

ECCO Eighteenth-Century Collections Online: via UCL Metalib at same

Autumn term
Week 1 Introduction
Specimen question: How did the term `Christianity’ change in meaning between 1450 and 1650?

Week 2 Christianity in the West anno 1450
Specimen question: How religiously dependent were lay people on clergy in the fifteenth century?
Core readings:

John van Engen, `The Church in the Fifteenth Century’, in Handbook, vol. 1, pp. 305-330 (ch. 9) [you can start at p. 309]

Francis Oakley, The Western Church in the Later Middle Ages (Ithaca, 1979)

Keith Thomas, Religion and the Decline of Magic (London, 1971), pp. 25-50

Bernd Moeller, "Piety in Germany Around 1500," in The Reformation in Medieval Perspective, ed. S. Ozment (Chicago: Quadrangle Books: 1971), 50-75.

Duffy, Eamon. The Stripping of the Altars: Traditional Religion in England 1400-1580 (New Haven, 1992), part I

Rubin, Miri. Corpus Chisti: The Eucharist in Late Medieval Culture (Cambridge, 1991)

Johan Huizinga, The Waning of the Middle Ages (many editions)

John van Engen, `The Christian Middle Ages as an Historiographical Prodblem’, American Historical Review 91 (1986): 519-52

John van Engen, Sisters and Brothers of the Common Life (Philadelphia, 2008)

Alister McGrath, The Intellectual Origins of the European Reformation (2^nd ed. Oxford, 2003)

Peter Dykema and Heiko Oberman, eds., Anticlericalism in Late Medieval & Early Modern Europe (Leiden, 1993)

Steven Ozment, The Age of Reform (New Haven, 1980), chs. 1-5

Larissa Taylor, Soldiers of Christ: Preaching in Late Mevieval and Reformation France (Oxford, 1992)

Charles Trinkaus and Heiko Oberman, eds., The Pursuit of Holiness in Late Medieval and Renaissance Religion (Leiden, 1974)

Heiko Oberman, Forerunners of the Reformation: the Shape of Late Medieval Thought (Philadelphia, 1981)

R.N. Swanson, Religion and Devotion in Europe, c. 1215 – c. 1515 (Cambridge, 1995)

Erika Rummel, `Voices of Reform from Hus to Erasmus’, in Handbook, vol. 2, pp. 61-91

Erasmus, Enchiridion Militis Christiani [The Handbook of the Militant Christian], abridged edition in John P. Dolan, ed., The Essential Erasmus (New York, 1964), pp. 24-93
Further readings:
Gerald Strauss, "Ideas of Reformatio and Renovatio From the Middle Ages to the Reformation," in Handbook, vol 2., pp. 1-30

Jerry Bentley, Humanists and Holy Writ

Lewis Spitz, The Religious Renaissance of the German Humanists

Cornelis Augustijn, Erasmus: His Life, Works, and Influence

Roland H. Bainton, Erasmus of Christendom (New York, 1969)

Lisa Jardine, Erasmus, Man of Letters (Princeton, 1993)

Marjorie O’Rourke Boyle, Rhetoric and Reform: Erasmus’ Civil Dispute with Luther (Cambridge, Mass., 1983)

Bernd Moeller, "The German Humanists and the Beginnings of the Reformation," in his Imperial Cities and the Reformation.

William Bouwsma, "Renaissance and Reformation: An Essay in their Affinities and Connections," in Heiko Oberman, ed., Luther and the Dawn of the Modern Era.

Charles Nauert, Humanism and the Culture of Renaissance Europe (Cambridge, 1995)

Albert Rabil, Jr. ed., Renaissance Humanism: Foundations, Forms and Legacy, 3 vols. (Philadelphia, 1988)

Paul O. Kristeller, Renaissance Thought, esp. chs. 1 and 4

Gerald Strauss, ed., Manifestations of Discontent in Germany on the Eve of the Reformation

A.G. Dickens, The German Nation and Martin Luther, chs. 1-4

Malcolm Lambert, Medieval Heresy: Popular Movements from the Gregorian Reform to the Reformation

Anne Hudson, Lollards and Their Books (London, 1985)

Howard Kaminsky, A History of the Hussite Revolution (Berkeley, 1967)

Gordon Leff, Heresy in the Later Middle Ages (Manchester, 1999)

Steven Ozment. ed., The Reformation in Medieval Perspective, essay by G. Ritter

Hilmar M. Pabel. Erasmus' vision of the Church. Kirksville, 1995.

Berndt Hamm, `What was the Reformation Doctrine of Justification?’, in C. Scott Dixon, ed., The German Reformation: The Essential Readings, ch. 3

Reader, items #17, 22, 25, 26, 32 [= #s 14, 19, 22, 23, 28 in 1^st edit]
Further readings:
Heiko Oberman, Luther: Man Between God and the Devil (New Haven, 1989)

Martin Brecht, Martin Luther, trans. James L. Schaaf, 3 vols. (Philadelphia, 1985-93)

Roland H. Bainton, Here I Stand (New York, 1950)

Erik K. Erikson, Young Man Luther (New York, 1958)

Mark U. Edwards, Jr., Luther and the False Brethren (Stanford, 1975)

David Steinmetz, Luther and Staupitz: An Essay in the Intellectual Origins of the Protestant Reformation (Durham, N.C., 1980)

Alastair McGrath, Luther's Theology of the Cross (Oxford, 1985)

Paul Althaus, The Theology of Martin Luther (Philadelphia, 1966)

B. Lohse, Martin Luther’s Theology (Minneapolis, 1999)

E.G. Rupp, The Righteousness of God: Luther Studies (London, 1968)

Steven Ozment, "Homo Viator: Luther and Late Medieval Theology," in Ozment, ed., The Reformation in Medieval Perspective (Chicago, 1971)

David Steinmetz, Luther in Context (Grand Rapids, 1995)

Scott H. Hendrix, Luther and the Papacy (Philadelphia, 1981)

Robert Kolb, Martin Luther as Prophet, Teacher, and Hero: Images of the Reformer, 1520-1620 (Grand Rapids, 1999)

Mark U. Edwards, Printing, Propaganda, and Martin Luther (Berkeley, 1994)

Robert Scribner, `The Incombustible Luther’, in his Popular Culture and Popular Movements in Reformation Germany (London, 1987)