Thesis (Ph.D.)--Boston University / The purpose of this dissertation is to compare family and educational values and practices of the Hutterite Brethren during the Reformation era with those of the main-stream of German-speaking Protestantism. Family and educational concepts and developments and the progress of elementary-vernacular education within both magisterial Protestantism and evangelical Anabaptism are described and their similarities and differences made clear. The Hutterites, who with the Mennonites constitute the two major groups of evangelical Anabaptism, are given particular attention since only they withdrew from the world to live in closed communistic societies. Within these communities they exhibited certain differences in their pattern of life from that of their contemporaries. [TRUNCATED]

This dissertation investigates the rescript of Narcissus and Pentheus episodes in Ovid’s "Metamorphoses" as published in 1545 by German author Jörg Wickram (met. III, 339-510 / W. III, 840-1239; met. III, 511-733 / W. III, 1240-1416). The text is a remake of Albrecht von Halberstadt’s corrupted work dating back to the late 12th and early 13th centuries, of which only five fragments survived. While there is an established interest among Classics scholars in Ovid’s reception in the U.K., France, and Italy, there is a paucity of research in Germany. Indeed, there are currently no translations, even in contemporary German, of Wickram’s poem, which has thus been largely ignored. Motivated by this gap in the literature, I translate and analyze Wickram’s transcript to discredit the alleged decline of classical humanism in 16th-century Germany and to examine the role of antiquity in the genesis of modern cultural identities. Additionally, I examine the commentary on Wickram’s "Metamorphoses" written by Gerhard Lorichius, a 16th-century priest of the city of Hadamar (Hessen), which provides meaningful insights into the first German example of moralization of the "Metamorphoses". Lorichius’s commentary, published in Roloff’s modern edition (1990), which includes the 1545 editio princeps of the text (A) and the 1551 edition (B) in apparatus, explains the Latin fabulae from a Christian perspective. The commentator illustrates pagan mythology, omitting and defusing Ovid’s representation of ‘indecencies.’ In the conclusive chapter, I highlight how this work contributes to the literature on the Ovidian reception during the Reformation in Germany and, more broadly, across Europe.

This work is an introduction to the part of correspondence of Martin Luther and Philipp Melanchthon, which engages directly in the history of german reformation. It illustrates, how did the both reformators subjectively perceive political, social and religious events in their surroundings and how did they comment it in the letters to their friends. Apart from the correspondence I used Luthers Tabletalks as other important source. Considering the limited range, this work just specializes in the moments of reformational events, which can be found as breakthrough and extraordinarily significant. The work keeps to chronological line to be possible to capture ideal and opinional evolution of Martin Luther, because his thinking was not consistent. The used bibliography serves for interconnection of reflections of reformators to understandable complex and for specification of information, which are accessible in sources.

This thesis explores the evolving history of the Cistercian convent of Günterstal in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. It is structured around the anointing of the Last Rites of a Günterstal nun who was blessed on her eyes, ears, nose, mouth, hands, heart and feet. The thesis takes each body part as a symbol for understanding the changing environment and practices of the convent, especially the relationship between the nuns' spiritual and everyday lives, and the ways in which the nuns interacted with the world outside. It argues that the nuns developed a spirituality in the later fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries which was closely connected with the everyday world around them in a series of practices which went into decline following the criticism of the Reformation. Many of these were strategies developed by the nuns themselves for breaking down boundaries between convent and world. Attempts at revival in the later sixteenth century of convent life sought to heighten the distance between the convent and the world, in part by developing new forms of internalised spirituality. Yet these attempts at reform were made more difficult by the conflicting interests of those who sought change, the criticism which had come before, and the response of the nuns themselves. The thesis analyses a number of different external symbols of convent life, from the spaces they inhabited to the objects they handled, and shows how these represented a number of different values of what it meant to be a nun in this period, values which did not always sit easily with each other. Günterstal maintained a noble character throughout this period and the social profile of its inhabitants often jarred with the push towards religious uniformity. This thesis shows that the symbolic value of these markers became increasingly heightened over the sixteenth century and took on new forms as a direct result of the attack on the convent way of life in the Reformation.