Book
The Primacy of the Postils
Catholics, Protestants, and the Dissemination of Ideas in Early Modern Germany
Language:
English
Published/Copyright:
2010
Purchasable on brill.com
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About this book
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.
Author / Editor information
John M. Frymire, Ph.D. (2001) in History, University of Arizona, is Associate Professor of History at the University of Missouri.
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.
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.
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Publishing information
Pages and Images/Illustrations in book
eBook published on:
December 23, 2009
eBook ISBN:
9789004183605
Pages and Images/Illustrations in book
Main content:
650
eBook ISBN:
9789004183605
Keywords for this book
EarlyModernClergy; HistoryofChristianity; Reformation; Preaching; EarlyModernCatholicism; CatholicReform; HistoryofPrinting; Counter-Reformation; Censorship; EarlyModernGermany
Audience(s) for this book
Those interested in Early Modern Germany, the Reformation, the history of German Catholicism, Lutheranism, and Calvinism, the history of preaching, the dissemination of ideas, and the history of printing and censorship.
