Sacred History

Uses of the Christian Past in the Renaissance World
Erscheinungsjahr 2012
ISBN: 978-0-19-959479-5
Verlag: OUP Oxford

Buch, Englisch, 364 Seiten, Print PDF, Format (B × H): 161 mm x 240 mm, Gewicht: 710 g

This volume provides the first geographically broad, comparative survey of early modern 'sacred history', or writing on the history of the Christian Church, its leaders and saints, and its institutional and doctrinal developments, in the two centuries from c. 1450-1650. With deep medieval roots, ecclesiastical history was generally a conservative enterprise, often serving to reinforce confessional, national, regional, dynastic, or local identities. But writers of sacred history innovated in research methods and in techniques of scholarly production, especially after the advent of print. The demand for sacred history was particularly acute in the various movements for religious reform, in both Catholic and Protestant traditions. After the Renaissance, many writers sought to apply humanist critical principles to writing about the church, but the sceptical thrust of humanist historiography threatened to undermine many ecclesiastical traditions, and religious historians often had to wrestle with tensions between criticism and piety.

Thirteen thematic chapters examine the influence of Renaissance humanism, religious reform, and other political, intellectual, and social developments of these two centuries on the writing of ecclesiastical history in its various forms. These diverse genres, inherited from medieval culture, included saints' lives, diocesan histories, national chronicles, and travel accounts. Early chapters examine Catholic and Protestant traditions of sacred historiography in western Europe, especially Italy and Switzerland. Subsequent chapters examine particular instances of sacred historiography in Germany, central Europe, Spain, England, Ireland, France, and Portuguese India; and developments in Christian art historiography and Holy Land antiquarianism.

Autoren/Hrsg.

Van Liere, Katherine

Ditchfield, Simon

Louthan, Howard

Fachgebiete

• Geisteswissenschaften Geschichtswissenschaft Weltgeschichte & Geschichte einzelner Länder und Gebietsräume Europäische Geschichte
• Geisteswissenschaften Geschichtswissenschaft Geschichtswissenschaft Allgemein Historiographie
• Geisteswissenschaften Christentum, Christliche Theologie Kirchengeschichte
• Geisteswissenschaften Geschichtswissenschaft Weltgeschichte & Geschichte einzelner Länder und Gebietsräume Geschichte einzelner Länder Europäische Länder

Inhaltsverzeichnis

- Part I: Church history in the Renaissance and Reformation

- 1: Anthony Grafton: Church history in early modern Europe: tradition and innovation

- 2: Euan Cameron: Primitivism, patristics and polemic in Protestant visions of early Christianity

- 3: Giuseppe Guazzelli: Cesare Baronio and the Roman Catholic vision of the early Church

- 4: Simon Ditchfield: What was sacred history? Mostly Roman Catholic uses of the Christian past after Trent

- Part II: National history and sacred history

- 5: David Collins: The Germania illustrata, humanist history, and the Christianization of Germany

- 6: Katherine Van Liere: Renaissance chroniclers and the apostolic origins of Spanish Christianity

- 7: Howard Louthan: Catholic visions of a holy past in central Europe

- 8: Rosamund Oates: Elizabethan histories of English Christian Origins

- 9: Salvador Ryan: Reconstructing Irish Catholic history after the Reformation

- Part III: Uses of sacred history in the early modern Catholic world

- 10: The lives of the saints in the French Renaissance c. 1500 c. 1640 (Jean-Marie Le Gall)

- 11: Doubting Thomas: the apostle and the Portuguese empire in early modern Asia (Liam Brockey)

- 12: Cultural history in the catacombs: early Christian art and Macarius s Hagioglypta (Irina Oryshkevich)

- 13: Scholarly pilgrims: antiquarian visions of the Holy Land (Adam Beaver)

Über Autor(innen)

Katherine Van Liere is professor of history at Calvin College in Grand Rapids, Michigan. She specializes in the intellectual and cultural history of early modern Spain, and has published numerous articles on Renaissance humanism, education, and historiography. Her current research focuses on the historical writings of Ambrosio de Morales and Antonio Agustín.

Simon Ditchfield is reader in history at the University of York, England. He specialises in Roman Catholic history writing and uses of the past in early modern society (especially Italy). He is currently completing a history about the making of Roman Catholicism as a world religion for the Oxford History of the Christian Church series to be published by OUP. His next project will be a study of the world history of the Society of Jesus by Daniello Bartoli (1608-85).; Howard Louthan is professor of history at the University of Florida. He specializes in the cultural and intellectual history of early modern central Europe. His most recent book examines the Catholic Reformation in seventeenth and eighteenth-century Bohemia. His current research focuses on the Reformation in Poland.