Sin And Confession On The Eve Of The Reformation

Although John Calvin often likened sacramental confession to butchery, the Council of Trent declared that for those who approached it worthily, it was made easy by its "great benefits and consolations." Thomas Tentler describes and evaluates the effectiveness of sacramental confession as a functioning institution designed "to cause guilt as well as cure guilt," seeing it in its proper place as a part of the social fabric of the Middle Ages. The author examines the institution of confession in practice as well as in theory, providing an analysis of a practical literature whose authors wanted to explain as clearly as they safely could what confessors and penitents had to believe, do, feel, say, and intend, if sacramental confession were to forgive sins. In so doing he recreates the mentality and experience that the Reformers attacked and the Counter-Reformers defended. Central to his thesis is the contention that Luther, Calvin, and the Fathers of Trent regarded religious institutions as the solution to certain social and psychological problems, and that an awareness of this attitude is important for an assessment of the significance of confession in late medieval and Reformation Europe. Originally published in 1977. The Princeton Legacy Library uses the latest print-on-demand technology to again make available previously out-of-print books from the distinguished backlist of Princeton University Press. These editions preserve the original texts of these important books while presenting them in durable paperback and hardcover editions. The goal of the Princeton Legacy Library is to vastly increase access to the rich scholarly heritage found in the thousands of books published by Princeton University Press since its founding in 1905.

This volume is comprised of thirteen essays that explore penitential teachings and practices from the late fifteenth to the early seventeenth centuries in Western Europe and its colonies. Together the essays reveal that in this period, penitence was an increasingly important force shaping the individual and society. Consequently, the authors argue, penitence is central to our understanding of early modern Christianity as it was taught and experienced in everyday life. From Germany to France and to the Americas, Catholics turned to traditional forms of penitence not only to save individual souls, but also to assert their confessional identity. For their part, Protestants established distinctive penitential approaches and institutions in accordance with their own understandings of sin and salvation. In thus examining the treatment of post-baptismal sin across chronological and confessional boundaries, the volume breaks new ground in the history of penance. The volume concludes with a postscript assessing the ways in which the essays enrich the current state of scholarship on penitence and encourage further research. Katharine Jackson Lualdi is an independent scholar. Anne T. Thayer is Assistant Professor of Church History at Lancaster Theological Seminary, Lancaster, Pennsylvania.

Reproduction of the original: The Eve of the Reformation by Francis Aidan Gasquet

Notions of which behaviours comprised sin, and what actions might lead to salvation, sat at the heart of Christian belief and practice in early modern England, but both of these vitally important concepts were fundamentally reconfigured by the reformation. Remarkably little work has been undertaken exploring the ways in which these essential ideas were transformed by the religious changes of the sixteenth-century. In the field of reformation studies, revisionist scholarship has underlined the vitality of late-medieval English Christianity and the degree to which people remained committed to the practices of the Catholic Church up to the eve of the reformation, including those dealing with the mortification of sin and the promise of salvation. Such popular commitment to late-medieval lay piety has in turn raised questions about how the reformation itself was able to take root. Whilst post-revisionist scholars have explored a wide range of religious beliefs and practices - such as death, providence, angels, and music - there has been a surprising lack of engagement with the two central religious preoccupations of the vast majority of people. To address this omission, this collection focusses upon the history and theology of sin and salvation in reformation and post-reformation England. Exploring their complex social and cultural constructions, it underlines how sin and salvation were not only great religious constants, but also constantly evolving in order to survive in the rapidly transforming religious landscape of the reformation. Drawing upon a range of disciplinary perspectives - historical, theological, literary, and material/art-historical - to both reveal and explain the complexity of the concepts of sin and salvation, the volume further illuminates a subject central to the nature and success of the Reformation itself. Divided into four sections, Part I explores reformers’ attempts to define and re-define the theological concepts of sin and salvation, while Part II looks at some of the ways in which sin and salvation were contested: through confessional conflict, polemic, poetry and martyrology. Part III focuses on the practical attempts of English divines to reform sin with respect to key religious practices, while Part IV explores the significance of sin and salvation in the lived experience of both clergy and laity. Evenly balancing contributions by established academics in the field with cutting-edge contributions from junior researchers, this collection breaks new ground, in what one historian of the period has referred to as the ‘social history of theology’.

Heather Hirschfeld recovers the historical specificity and the conceptual vigor of the term "satisfaction" as used in dramas of the sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries.

What was the effect of the Reformation movement on the parishioners of the German countryside? This book examines the reform movement at the level of its implementation - the rural parish. Investigation of the Reformation and the sixteenth-century parish reveals the strength of tradition and custom in village life and how this parish culture obstructed and frustrated the efforts of the Lutheran reformers. The Reformation was not passively adopted by the rural inhabitants. On the contrary, the parishioners manipulated the reform movement to serve their own ends. Parish documentation reveals that the system of parish rule diffused the disciplinary aims of the church and rendered the pastors impotent. A look at parish beliefs suggests that the nature of parish thought worked to undermine the main tenets of the Lutheran faith, and that the legacy of the Reformation was a dialogue between these two realms of experience.

Celebrating the fortieth anniversary of this seminal book, this new edition includes an illuminating foreword by Carlos Eire and Ronald K. Rittges The seeds of the swift and sweeping religious movement that reshaped European thought in the 1500s were sown in the late Middle Ages. In this book, Steven Ozment traces the growth and dissemination of dissenting intellectual trends through three centuries to their explosive burgeoning in the Reformations—both Protestant and Catholic—of the sixteenth century. He elucidates with great clarity the complex philosophical and theological issues that inspired antagonistic schools, traditions, and movements from Aquinas to Calvin. This masterly synthesis of the intellectual and religious history of the period illuminates the impact of late medieval ideas on early modern society. With a new foreword by Carlos Eire and Ronald K. Rittgers, this modern classic is ripe for rediscovery by a new generation of students and scholars.

Go In Peace offers help to clergy exercising pastoral ministry as confessors. It provides an overview of Anglican Rite of Reconciliation, the pastoral skills needed, its relationship to pastoral counselling, the disciplines of confidentiality and the integration of this ministry into mature priestly identity and spirituality.

At first sight, the subjects of piety and family life may appear to have little in common. Yet, as the essays in this volume make clear, there are in fact a number of shared features and points of contact that make the study of these issues a particularly fertile area for scholars of the Reformation period. Whether it be the concept of an individual's relationship with God - so often articulated in familial terms, the place of domestic devotions, or the difficulties that faced families split by rival confessional beliefs and mixed marriages, this book demonstrates how piety and family life were interwoven in the social and theological landscape of early modern Europe. Inspired by the works of Steven Ozment, the volume is divided into two sections, each of which deals with a particular concern of his writings. The first four chapters address issues of Reformation theology and the medieval heritage, whilst the remaining seven examine the spiritual life of families. Together they underline how modern scholarship by broadening its conceptual outlook and bringing together seemingly unrelated subjects, can provide a more sophisticated understanding of the past.