Abstract
The purpose of this volume is to provide a collection of essays embodying recent research on popular religion within the boundaries of the Holy Roman Empire (Germany and Bohemia) in the later middle ages and early modern period. There has been a considerable efflorescence of research on the general theme of ‘popular religion’ over the past decade, although very little has been published on German topics, whether in English or German.1 The work presented here represents a sampling of approaches and subjects that is distinctive in three ways. First, it reveals the extremely broad range of problems and issues that may be explored under the heading ‘popular religion’, encompassing female spirituality, the role of gender, the psychology of religious devotion, the creation of religious mythology and forms of religio-political discourse, attitudes towards the Jews, witchcraft, popular magic, the nature of Protestant ‘popular belief’ and the appropriation of popular religious phenomena by the Catholic Reformation. Such issues also encompass both the rural and urban worlds, and deal with intensively private as well as with overtly public manifestations of belief.
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Notes and References
For an overview of recent approaches and issues, see Robert W. Scribner, ‘Elements of Popular Belief’, in Thomas A. Brady, Heiko A. Oberman and James D. Tracey (eds), Handbook of European History (Leiden, 1995); for recent German work,
see Richard van Dülmen, ‘Volksfrömmigkeit und konfessionelles Christentum im 16. und 17. Jht’, in Wolfgang Schieder (ed.), Volksreligiosität in der modernen Sozialgeschichte (Göttingen, 1986) pp. 14–30;
Richard van Dülmen (ed.), Arbeit, Frömmigkeit und Eigensinn: Studien zur historischen Kulturforschung II (Frankfurt a. M., 1990).
For an overview of these polarities, see R. W. Scribner, ‘Volksglaube und Volksfrömmigkeit: Begriffe und Historiographie’, in H. Molitor and H. Smolinsky (eds), Volksfrömmigkeit in der Frühneuzeit (Münster, 1994) pp. 121–38.
For ‘culture as appropriation’, Roger Chartier, ‘Culture as Appropriation’, in S. L. Kaplan (ed.), Understanding Popular Culture (Berlin, New York, Amsterdam, 1984) pp. 229–53.
R. W. Scribner, ‘Is a History of Popular Culture Possible?’, History of European Ideas, 10 (1989) pp. 175–91, esp. 179.
Gananath Obeyesekere, ‘British Cannibals: Reflections on the Death and Resurrection of the Explorer James Cook’, Critical Inquiry, 18 (1992) pp. 630–54.
See also Johannes Wolfart, ‘Political Culture and Religion in Lindau 1520–1628’, Cambridge University Ph.D. dissertation, 1994.
See Marc Forster, The Counter-Reformation in the Villages: Religion and Reform in the Bishopric of Speyer, 1560–1720 (Ithaca, NY, 1992);
Étienne François, Die unsichtbare Grenze: Protestanten und Katholiken in Augsburg 1648–1806 (Abhandlungen zur Geschichte der Stadt Augsburg, 33, Sigmaringen, 1991).
See Thomas A. Fudge, ‘Myth, Heresy and Propaganda in the Radical Hussite Movement, 1409–1437’, Cambridge University Ph.D. dissertation, 1992; for the broader tradition connecting the first Bohemian Reformation to the Reformations of the sixteenth century,
Frantisek Kavka, ‘Bohemia’, in Bob Scribner, Roy Porter and Mikulas Teich (eds), The Reformation in National Context (Cambridge, 1994) pp. 131–54.
On these issues, see R. W. Scribner, ‘The Reformation, Popular Magic and the “Disenchantment of the World”’, Journal of Interdisciplinary History, 23 (1993) pp. 475–94;
on ‘providentialism’ see especially Kaspar von Greyerz, Vorsehungsglaube und Kosmologie: Studien zu englischen Selbstzeugnissen des 17. Jhts (Göttingen, 1990), which although focussed on England has considerable parallels in the German context.
For the Catholic campaign, Philip M. Soergel, Wondrous in his Saints. Counter-Reformation Propaganda in Bavaria (Berkeley, Cal., 1993); the cult of St Luther in R. W. Scribner, ‘“Incombustible Luther”: the Image of the Reformer in Early Modern Germany’ and ‘Luther Myth — A Popular Historiography of the Reformer’, both in Popular Culture and Popular Movements in Reformation Germany (London, 1987) pp. 301–55; for Protestant attitudes towards sainthood, Robert Kolb, For All the Saints: Changing Perceptions of Martyrdom and Sainthood in the Lutheran Reformation (Macon, Ga, 1987).
I have discussed these subjects in ‘The Impact of the Reformation on Daily Life’, in Mensch und Objekt im Mittelalter und in der frühen Neuzeit. Leben — Alltag — Kultur, Veröffentlichung des Instituts für Realienkunde des Mittelalters und der frühen Neuzeit, vol. 13, Sitzungsberichte der Österreichischen Akademie der Wissenschaften, phil.-hist. Klasse, vol. 568 (Vienna, 1990) pp. 315–43, esp. 334–40; ‘Symbolising Boundaries: Defining Social Space in the Daily Life of Early Modern Germany’, in G.Blaschitz et al. (eds), Symbole des Alltags — Alltag der Symbole. Festschrift für Harry Kühnl (Graz, 1992) pp. 821–41, esp. 831–2. On the ‘dangerous dead’ see Thomas Schürmann, Nachzehrglauben in Mitteleuropa (Marburg, 1990)
and Paul Barber, Vampires, Burial and Death: Folklore and Reality (New Haven, 1988).
The classic statement of this view is that of Jean Delumeau, Catholicism between Luther and Voltaire: A New View of the Counter-Reformation (London, 1977), with his ‘christianisation’ thesis, an interpretation that now looks increasingly implausible on both sides of the Reformation divide. For a recent sketch of the wider historiographical tradition here, see Forster, The Counter-Reformation in the Villages.
Louis Châtellier, The Europe of the Devout: The Catholic Reformation and the Formation of a New Society (Cambridge, 1989);
Louis Châtellier, La religion des pauvres: Les sources du christianisme moderne xvi e –xix e siècles (Paris, 1992); Forster, The Counter-Reformation in the Villages;
David Gentilcore, From Bishop to Witch: The System of the Sacred in Early Modern Terra d’Otranto (Manchester, 1992); Soergel, Wondrous in his Saints.
For a fuller view of Johnson’s work, see Trevor R. Johnson, ‘The Recatholicisation of the Upper Palatinate 1621–c.1700’, Cambridge University Ph.D. dissertation, 1992.
R. Po-Chia Hsia, The Myth of Ritual Murder: Jews and Magic in Reformation Germany (New Haven, Conn., 1988).
Caroline Walker Bynum, Jesus as Mother: Studies in the Spirituality of the High Middle Ages (Berkeley, Cal., 1982); Fragmentation and Redemption: Essays on Gender and the Human Body in Medieval Religion (New York, 1991).
L. Roper, ‘Witchcraft and Fantasy in Early Modern Germany’, History Workshop Journal, 32 (1991) pp. 19–43.
Besides the recent work of Obeyesekere, ‘British Cannibals’ and his The Apotheosis of Captain Cook (Princeton, N.J., 1992), see the remarks by Hans Medick, ‘“Missionare im Ruderboot”? Ethnologische Erkenntnisweisen als Herausforderung an die Sozialgeschichte’, Geschichte und Gesellschaft, 10 (1984) pp. 295–319.
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© 1996 Bob Scribner and Trevor Johnson
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Scribner, B. (1996). Introduction. In: Scribner, B., Johnson, T. (eds) Popular Religion in Germany and Central Europe, 1400–1800. Themes in Focus. Palgrave, London. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-349-24836-0_1
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