In recent decades, research on the impact of the Reformation on popular religious life in Germany has sparked a controversy challenging the traditional assumption that Protestantism had a deep and lasting effect on all levels of sixteenth-century life. This study uses previously neglected archival sources, the records of the Wurttemberg church visitations over a forty-year period, to investigate various areas of church life touched on by the debate. The author examines the social and cultural nature of the pastorate as a professional group, areas of conflict and agreement between representatives of the official church and the parishioners, the nature of the church visitations, and the standards and expectations of the visitors concerning lay religious life and discipline. Church visitations were conducted to inform higher ecclesiastical authorities about the conditions of religious life in individual parishes. The visitors interviewed and reported on members of the community from all walks of life: pastor, mayor, schoolmaster, folk-healer, shepherd, and, in some cases, village drunk. The visitations were used to discipline the clergy and laity through exhortations, warnings, fines, and, in rare cases, imprisonment. The author shows that the system of penalties, sanctions, and persuasions had only mixed success in inhibiting un-Christian behavior. When the church's interest in discipline coincided with the interest of village groups in restraining profligacy or laxity, the church had greater success. The Wurttemberg records reveal that parishioners showed only moderate zeal in attending the principal Sunday morning service and that weekday and Sunday afternoon services were poorly attended. For communion, many of the laity seem to have felt that an annual participation at Easter services fulfilled their religious obligation. Young people and single adults appeared most often negligent in their attendance at church, sometimes because of the demands of seasonal agriculture, but more often because of general indifference to the church or active resistance to the church's efforts to discipline such festive pastimes as dancing and berry picking. In the process of investigating the relationship between parishioners and the state church, the author presents information on the clergy's social and geographic origins, education and culture, and economic conditions. He analyzes the attitudes and behavior surrounding popular religious practices and evaluates the church's attempts to reform and regulate family life and social mores.

Worship of the triune God has always stood at the center of the Christian life. That was certainly the case during the sixteenth-century Reformation as well. Yet in the midst of tremendous social and theological upheaval, the church had to renew its understanding of what it means to worship God. In this volume, which serves as a companion to IVP Academic's Reformation Commentary on Scripture series, Reformation scholar Karin Maag takes readers inside the worshiping life of the church during this era. Drawing from sources across theological traditions, she explores several aspects of the church's worship, including what it was like to attend church, reforms in preaching, the function of prayer, how Christians experienced the sacraments, and the roles of both visual art and music in worship. With Maag as your guide, you can go to church—with the Reformers.

Offered here for the first time, a wide variety of specialists explore continuity and change in pre-modern Europe. Collectively, they contribute to the current historiographical debates about continuity and discontinuity between the Middle Ages and the Early Modern era. The themes reflect eminent scholar Heiko A. Oberman’s vast range of interests in religious, cultural and political history across a broad chronological and conceptual spectrum that seeks to overcome the limits of the divide between Medieval and Early Modern History. Publications by Heiko A. Oberman: • Edited by Thomas A. Brady, Jr., Heiko A. Oberman, and James D. Tracy, Handbook of European History 1400-1600: Late Middle Ages, Renaissance and Reformation. I: Structures and Assertions, ISBN: 9789004097605 • Edited by Thomas A. Brady, Jr., Heiko A. Oberman, and James D. Tracy, Handbook of European History 1400-1600: Late Middle Ages, Renaissance and Reformation. II: Visions, Programs, Outcomes, ISBN: 9789004097612 • Edited by C. Trinkaus and H.A. Oberman, The pursuit of holiness in late medieval and renaissance religion, ISBN: 9789004037915 (Out of print) • Edited by H.A. Oberman and T.A. Brady, Jr., Itinerarium Italicum: The Profile of the Italian Renaissance in the Mirror of its European Transformations, ISBN: 9789004042599 • Edited by H.A. Oberman and F. A. James III, Via Augustini: Augustine in the later Middle Ages, Renaissance and Reformation, ISBN: 9789004093645 (Out of print) • Edited by Peter A. Dykema and Heiko A. Oberman, Anticlericalism in Late Medieval and Early Modern Europe, ISBN: 9789004095182 • Luther and the Dawn of the Modern Era, ISBN: 9789004161993 (Out of print) Founding Editor of Studies in the History of Christian Traditions and Studies in Medieval and Reformation Traditions

Across Europe, the parish church has stood for centuries at the centre of local communities; it was the focal point of its religious life, the rituals performed there marked the stages of life from the cradle to the grave. Nonetheless the church itself artistically and architecturally stood apart from the parish community. It was often the largest and only stone-built building in a village; it was legally distinct being subject to canon law, as well as consecrated for the celebration of religious rites. The buildings associated with the "cure of souls" were sacred sites or holy places, where humanity interacted with the divine. In spite of the importance of the parish church, these buildings have generally not received the same attention from historians as non-parochial places of worship. This collection of essays redresses this balance and reflects on the parish church across a number of confessions - Catholic, Lutheran, Reformed and Anti-Trinitarian - during the early modern period. Rather than providing a series of case studies of individual buildings, each essay looks at the evolution of parish churches in response to religious reform as well as confessional change and upheaval. They examine aspects of their design and construction; furnishings and material culture; liturgy and the use of the parish church. While these essays range widely across Europe, the volume also considers how religious provision and the parish church were translated into a global context with colonial and commercial expansion in the Americas and Asia. This interdisciplinary volume seeks to identify what was distinctive about the parish church for the congregations that gathered in them for worship and for communities across the early modern world.

Susan Karant-Nunn argues that the 16th-century Reformation movement sought not only to modify people's doctrinal convictions and their behavior but to root these changes in altered sentiment.

The Encyclopedia of Martin Luther and the Reformation is a comprehensive global study of the life and work of Martin Luther and the movements that followed him—in history and through today. Organized by a stellar advisory board of Luther and Reformation scholars, the encyclopedia features nearly five hundred entries that examine Luther’s life and impact worldwide. The two-volume set provides overviews of basics such as the 95 Theses as well as more complex topics such as reformational distinctions. Entries explore Luther’s contributions to theology, sacraments, his influence on the church and contemporaries, his character, and more. The work also discusses Luther’s controversies and topics such as gender, sexuality, and race. Publishing at the five hundredth anniversary of the Reformation, this is an essential reference work for understanding the Reformation and its legacy today.