Hostname: page-component-76fb5796d-wq484 Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-04-29T09:16:48.362Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

Protestant spirituality in the first age of the Reformation

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  21 March 2016

Gordon Rupp*
Affiliation:
University of Cambridge

Extract

Spirituality is a catholic word, beginning to dissolve into ecumenese, but it is much better than ‘piety’ with its nineteenth-century overtones, or the rather better eighteenth-century phrase ‘inward religion’. And it suggests, as I should wish to do, some of the continuities between medieval and protestant religion.

The fifteenth century is still for historians a very misty valley, but we are coming to see some things more clearly, and one thing is that late medieval thought and devotion is not to be written off or talked down as preparing for the Reformation because it was in fact religion run to seed, and in the field of devotion characterised by a morbid and individualistic pietism. Preaching, for example, was of growing importance. We have not yet the full story of the number of preacherships founded in German towns in the fifteenth century and their significance. We know that this was accompanied by a stress on the importance of hearing the Word, almost to the point of disparaging the sacrament of the altar, and not only Wessel Gansfort but Gabriel Biel can be quoted at this point. Again, the lay study of a vernacular Bible ante-dates the reformers. Much as John Bunyan echoed the older English of the puritan Geneva Bible, so that astonishing market-gardener among the prophets, Clement Ziegler of Strasbourg, is steeped in the pre-Reformation Bible which appeared in 1466.

Type
Research Article
Copyright
Copyright © Ecclesiastical History Society 1972

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

page no 155 note 1 Butterworth, C., The English Primers (Philadelphia 1953)Google Scholar.

page no 156 note 1 Staedke, J., Die Theologie des Jungen Bullingers (Zürich 1962) pp 20ffGoogle Scholar.

page no 156 note 2 Rupp, [E. G.], Patterns [of Reformation] (London 1969) 1 Google Scholar.

page no 156 note 3 von] Loewenich, [W., [Von Augustin zu Luther] (Witten 1959) p 268 Google Scholar.

page no 156 note 4 Hülsbusch, W., Elemente einer Kreuzestheologie in der Spätschrifien Bonaventuras (Düsseldorf 1868) pp 9ffGoogle Scholar.

page no 157 note 1 [Rupp, E. G., ‘Luther’s 95 Theses and the “Theology of the Cross”’], in Luther for an Ecumenical Age, ed Meyer, C. S. (St Louis 1967)Google Scholar.

page no 157 note 2 Baring, G., Bibliographie der Ausgaben der ‘Theologia Deutsch’ (Baden-Baden 1963)Google Scholar.

page no 157 note 3 Ibid, p 27.

page no 157 note 4 Wertelius, G., Oratio Continua (Luna 1970)Google Scholar.

page no 158 note 1 Lortz, J., The Reformation in Germany, trans Walls, R., 2 vols (London 1968) 1, p 434 Google Scholar.

page no 158 note 2 Smith, P., Life and Letters of Martin Luther (London 1911) p 250 Google Scholar.

page no 158 note 3 WA, XXXVIII, p 358, lines 1ff.

page no 158 note 4 Ibid.

page no 159 note 1 Ibid, p 359, lines 4ff.

page no 159 note 2 Ibid, p 360, lines 1ff.

page no 159 note 3 Ibid, p 362, lines 30ff.

page no 159 note 4 Ibid, p 363, lines 4ff.

page no 159 note 5 Ibid, p 363, lines 21ff.

page no 159 note 6 Ibid, p 364, lines 7ff.

page no 160 note 1 Ibid, p 372, lines 25ff.

page no 160 note 2 Ibid, p 373, lines 7 ff.

page no 160 note 3 Schmidt, K. D., Gesammelte Aufsätze (Göttingen 1967)Google Scholar, Luther lehrt beten; Loewenich, pp 261ff, ‘Die Frömmigkeit Martin Luthers’.

page no 160 note 4 Köhler, [W.], [Dogmengeschichte] (Zürich 1951) p 430 Google Scholar.

page no 160 note 5 Manschreck, C.L., Melanchthon, The Quiet Reformer (New York 1958) pp 311-13Google Scholar; Melanchthon on Christian Doctrine, ed Manschreck, C. L. (New York 1965) pp 297ffGoogle Scholar.

page no 161 note 1 Köhler, p 434.

page no 161 note 2 Ibid.

page no 161 note 3 Peter, Stephens, The Holy Spirit in the Theology of Martin Bucer (Cambridge 1970) pp 89ffGoogle Scholar.

page no 161 note 4 The Commonplaces of Wolfgang Musculus (London 1561) fols 484ff.

page no 161 note 5 Ibid, p 485.

page no 161 note 6 John, Calvin, The Institution of Christian Religion, trans Thomas, Norton (London 1587) bk 111, ch 20Google Scholar. See also his Commentaries on the Psalms; also Wallace, R. S., Calvin’s Doctrine of the Christian Life (Edinburgh 1959) pp 270ffGoogle Scholar.

page no 162 note 1 The English Reformers, ed Parker, T. H. L., Library of Christian Classics, XXVI (London 1966)Google Scholar.

page no 163 note 1 Tyndale, W., Doctrinal Treatises etc, Exposition and Notes etc: An Answer etc, ed Walter, H., 3 vols, Parker Society (Cambridge 1848-50) 1, p 93 Google Scholar.

page no 163 note 2 Ibid, pp 296-8.

page no 163 note 3 Barge, H., Andreas Bodenstein von Karlstadt, 2 vols (Leipzig 1905) 1, p 492 Google Scholar.

page no 164 note 1 Q[uellen und] F[orschungen zur] R[eformationsgeschichte], XXIV, Hans Denck, Schriften, ed Baring, G. and Fellmann, W., Quellen zur Geschichte der Täufer, VI, 1-3 (Gütersloh 1955-60) 11, p 105 Google Scholar.

page no 164 note 2 Kolde, T., ‘Zum Prozess des Johannes Denck und der drei gottlosen Maler von Nurnberg, in Beiträge zur Reformationsgeschichte (Leipzig 1890)Google Scholar.

page no 165 note 1 Rupp, Patterns, 111; Gritsch, E.W., Reformer without a Church (Philadelphia 1967)Google Scholar; Goerters, H. J., Innere und Aussere Ordnungin der Theologie Thomas Müntzers (Leiden 1967)Google Scholar.

page no 165 note 2 QFR, XXVI, Quellen zur Geschichte der Taüfer, VIII, 1-2, Elsass, ed Rott, H. G. (Gütersloh 1960)Google Scholar; Kiwiet, G.J., Pilgram Marbeck (Kassel 1958)Google Scholar; Klassen, W., Covenant and Community (Kassel 1968)Google Scholar.

page no 166 note 1 Loewenich, pp 261ff.

page no 167 note 1 Luther for an Ecumenical Age, pp 82ff Flngschriften [aus der ersten Jahren der Reformation], ed Clemen, O. (Berlin 1967) 1, pp 21ffGoogle Scholar.

page no 167 note 2 Flugschriften, 11, pp 1ff.

page no 168 note 1 Ibid.

page no 168 note 2 Latimer, H., Works, ed Come, G. E., 2 vols, Parker Society (Cambridge 1844-5) 1, p 228 Google Scholar.

page no 168 note 3 Ibid, p 393.

page no 169 note 1 Urbanus, Rhegius, Leben und ausgewählte Werke, Uhlhorn, G. (Elberfeld 1861) pp 330-3Google Scholar.

page no 170 note 1 WA, XLV, pp S32ff.