Overview

Scholarship on the German Reformation has long equated preaching with Protestantism, just as many scholars have employed sermons but usually in supplemental and unsystematic ways. Based on an analysis of over 400 standard sermon collections (postils) produced by Catholics, Lutherans, and Calvinists (1520-1620), this study offers the first comprehensive, systematic presentation of these works from a cross-confessional perspective. It lays to rest the notion that preaching was somehow distinctively Protestant while tracing the creation, production, use, and censorship of postils. These sermon collections were nothing less than the applied distillation of Christianity delivered on a regular basis by the clergy to the laity, and as such the most important vehicle for the dissemination of ideas in early modern Germany.

Full Product Details

9789004180369

Table of Contents

Reviews

[...] a study of the best kind, not only presenting significant new material but crammed with ideas for future research. Amy Nelson Burnett, University of Nebraska-Lincoln. In: Sixteenth Century Journal, Vol. 42, No. 1 (2012), pp. 182-183. [Frymire's] book is nothing less than a thorough bibliographical study of postils in the first century of Reformation Germany. [...] Scholarship has woefully underappreciated postils when one considers the numerically staggering printed output and the service to preaching. [...] we may hope that his monograph will arouse the sustained scholarly attention that early modern postils deserve. Hilmar M. Pabel, Simon Fraser University. In: The Journal of Ecclesiastical History, Vol. 62, No. 2 (April 2011), pp. 390-391.

Author Information

John M. Frymire, Ph.D. (2001) in History, University of Arizona, is Associate Professor of History at the University of Missouri.

Tab Content 6

Customer Reviews

Recent Reviews

Countries Available