The historiography on western European Holy Land pilgrimage effectively ends with the fifteenth century, giving the inaccurate impression that early modern western Christians either did not visit Jerusalem or, if they did, they were not true pilgrims. Though pilgrim numbers certainly declined in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries from their medieval heights, both Catholic and, much more surprisingly, Protestant pilgrims continued to make religiously motivated journeys to Jerusalem. Some even publishing pilgrimage narratives on their return. Twenty-five pilgrimage narratives, over half by Protestant authors and published in Protestant territories, were written between the mid-sixteenth and mid-seventeenth centuries. These largely unexplored sources underscore the complexities of confessional identity in the century and a half following the start of the Reformation. Without exception, the reformers condemned pilgrimage as part of an illegitimate theology of works righteousness. Using both historical and anthropological methodologies, this dissertation addresses the question of how Protestant pilgrims dealt with the apparent conflict between religious doctrine and personal action. It concludes that in the face of such attacks, Protestant pilgrim-authors, mostly Lutherans, attempted to redeem Holy Land pilgrimage by recasting the practice so as to neutralize criticisms and reinforce Lutheran doctrine. The dissertation's first part, comprising a chapter of background on medieval pilgrimage and a second analyzing the expressed motivations for Protestant pilgrimage, examines the ways Lutheran pilgrim-authors justified both traveling to Jerusalem and publishing descriptions of that travel. It argues that Protestant authors believed Holy Land pilgrimage and Holy Land pilgrimage narratives could lead to greater understanding and appreciation of Scripture, and thus to greater faith. The second part of the dissertation consists of three chapters. Chapter three deals with the place of Jerusalem in medieval and early modern Christianity, paying particular attention to the Ottoman Jerusalem of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, the Jerusalem encountered by these pilgrim-authors. The next two chapters (four and five) in turn examine the way the Protestant pilgrim-authors describe their encounter with the land and people of Palestine. For many Protestant pilgrims, the desiccated landscape of Palestine, what they saw as its ruined state, was a warning for their readers about God's righteous anger at human sinfulness. Again, the authors emphasize Biblical literacy. Protestant authors constantly read the landscape around them through the Bible, and read the Bible through the landscape. The final chapter explores the descriptions of other Christians residing in the early modern Holy Land, specifically the Franciscans and varied sects of Eastern Christianity. Much scholarly attention has been, for good reason, lavished on the relationship between Christianity and Islam, how Muslims were used as a mirror for creating European Christian identity. In their discussion of other Christians, however, Protestant pilgrims are able to produce a more finely detailed picture of their own particular religious identity. By bouncing their ideas of themselves off their image of other Christians, they come to a clearer understanding of what being a Christian meant for them. In the end, pilgrimage Jerusalem, was part of the larger debate about Christian identity and legitimacy.

No description available.

The early nineteenth century was a period in which the German confessional divide increasingly became a national-political problem. After the dissolution of the Holy Roman Empire (1806) and the Wars of Liberation (1813-1815), Germans became consumed with how to build a nation. Religion was still a salient manifestation of German identity and difference in the nineteenth century, and the confessional divide between Catholics and Protestants remained the most significant impediment to German national unity. Bridging the confessional divide was essential to realizing national unity, but one could only address the separation of the confessions by directly confronting, or at least thinking around, memories of Martin Luther and the Protestant Reformation. This dissertation examines how proponents of church unity used and abused memories of Luther and the Reformation to imagine German confessional and national unity from 1817 through 1883. It employs the insights and methods of collective memory research to read the sermons and speeches, pamphlets and poems, histories and hagiographies produced by ecumenical clergy and laity to commemorate Luther and the Reformation, and to understand how efforts toward church unity informed contemporary ideas of German confessional and national identity and unity.Histories of nineteenth-century German society, culture, and politics have been predicated on the ostensible strength of the confessional divide. This dissertation, however, looks at nineteenth-century German history, and the history of nineteenth-century German nationalism in particular, from an interconfessional perspective--one that acknowledges the interaction and overlapping histories of German Catholics and Protestants rather than treating each group separately. Recent histories of the relationship between German religion and nationalism have considered how confessional alterity was used to construct confessionally and racially-exclusive ideas of the German nation. This dissertation complements those histories by revealing how notions of confessional unity, rather than difference, were employed in the construction of the German nation. As such, the history of ecumenism in nineteenth-century Germany represents an alternative history of German nationalism; one that imagined a German nation through a reunion of the separated confessions, rather than on the basis of iron and blood.

This dissertation examines the formation of marriage in Scotland between the mid-fourteenth century and the late sixteenth century. In particular, it focuses on betrothals, marriage negotiations, ritual, and the place that these held in late medieval Scottish society. This study extends to the generation following the Reformation to examine the extent to which the Reformation influenced the marriage planning of wealthy Scots. It concludes that much of the social impact of the Reformation was not reflected in family life until at least a generation after reform. Scottish society and culture was influenced both by contemporary literature, which discussed the role of marriage formation, and by concurrent events involving high-profile marriages. These helped to define the context of marriage for society as a whole. This work relies heavily on the pre-nuptial contracts of lairds (the Scottish gentry) and nobles, which reflected certain aspects of their marriage patterns and strategies. The context and clauses of an extensive group of 272 Scottish marriage contracts from published and archival collections illuminate aspects of the formation of Scottish marriage, such as the land and money that changed hands, the extent to which brides and grooms were influenced by their kin, and the timelines for betrothals. This study is the only comprehensive work that has been done concerning the formation of marriage in medieval Scotland. The Campbells of Glenorchy and the Carnegie family both provide excellent case studies in which to examine the process of the choice of marriage partners, negotiation of marital arrangements, and the solemnizing of the unions. They also demonstrate the extent to which families were upwardly mobile through marriage. Although, until now, there has been a focus on the political potential of arranged marriage in Scotland, it is clear that there were social and financial advantages to kin groups that carried out careful marriage planning. / SSHRC

Exile is, as Edward Said so eloquently put it, “the perilous territory of not-belonging.” Exiled peoples operate on the margins of their native culture: part of it, but excluded from it permanently or temporarily. Broadly speaking, my project explores the impact of exile on English literature of the late 15th and early 16th centuries. English exiles appear frequently in literary studies of the period, but little attention has thus far been focused on the effect of exile itself on late medieval and early modern authors. Historical studies on exile have been more prevalent and engaging. My project builds on this work and contributes new and groundbreaking investigations into the literary reflections of these important topics, mapping the influence of exile on trans-Reformation English literature. My dissertation identifies and defines a new, critical lens focusing on later medieval and early modern literature. I call this lens the “mind of exile,” a cognitive phenomenon that influences textual structure, and metaphorical usage, as well as shapes individual and national identities. It contributes new theories regarding the development of polemic as a genre and their contribution to the development of the “nation-state” idea that occurred in the sixteenth century. It identifies a new genre I call polemic chronicle, which adopts and deploys the conventions of chronicle in order to declare a personal and/or national identity. Lastly, it contributes new scholarship to Spenser studies by building on established scholarship exploring the hybrid identity of Edmund Spenser. To these studies, I add fresh critical readings of A View of the State of Ireland and Colin Clouts Comes Home Againe. Both texts represent, I argue, proto-colonial literature influenced by Spenser’s mind of exile that explore England’s new position at the end of the sixteenth century as a burgeoning imperial power.

Ämnet för denna uppsats är mottagandet av reformationen i Småland 1542-1543 med utgångspunkt i Dackefejden. Mitt syfte är att jag skall utröna hur reformationen bemöttes i Småland med Dackefejden som exempel. Jag skall resonera och undersöka hur präster och bönder reagerade på reformationen. Min teori är att reformationen togs emot på ett negativt sätt. Huvudskälet var att bönderna och prästerskapet var missnöjda med att de blivit påtvingade den reformatoriska läran, samt att den svenska centralmakten hade kringskurit deras inkomstmöjligheter. Min metod är en historisk studiemetod. Min metod går ut på att jag tolkar källor utifrån mina frågeställningar och brukar den allmänna kunskapen som finns i källorna. Mitt perspektiv är det religiösa. Resultatet av mitt arbete är att reformationen togs emot på ett negativt sätt av bönderna och de katolska prästerna.

Thesis (M. Div.)--St. Vladimir's Orthodox Theological Seminary, 1987. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 59-61).

Zugl.: Neuendettelsau, Augustana-Hochsch., Habil.-Schr., 2004

Zugl.: Augsburg, Univ., Diss., 2005

Thesis (M. Div.)--St. Vladimir's Orthodox Theological Seminary, 1987. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 59-61).