Volume 7, Issue 2 - Special issue: Invention, Transfer, and Reception: The Making of the European Reformation; Guest editor: Zsombor Tóth

This essay analyses the relationship between scholarly and public treatments of the Lutheran Reformation surrounding its 500th anniversary in Germany in 2017. It aims at critically re-evaluating the celebrations and their media coverage from a historical and historiographical perspective. Taking into account important links between contemporary and earlier forms of German Reformation memory, the chapter first focuses on current views of Martin Luther and the posting of his theses, because both featured prominently during the official celebrations and were meant to link the Lutheran Reformation to modernity. The next part summarizes the historical origins of Luther’s alleged hammering of his theses. The essay then assesses another contested issue; namely a diffusion of Lutheranism from the small town of Wittenberg into Europe and across the world. The final section addresses current historiographical and methodological trends in German Reformation research and how they connect to a public Reformation memory.

What was the message of the 500th anniversary of the Reformation in 2017 in Germany? In preparation for the jubilee, there was an intensive debate on how to commemorate this anniversary. Critical examinations by historians warned about personalizing this anniversary too much by showing that the anniversaries in the past were usually politically “exploited.” In the end, it became clear for several reasons that an adequate commemoration of the Reformation jubilee today could be justifiable only in an ecumenical celebration serving both commemoration and reconciliation. In this regard, the 2017 jubilee was the first Reformation anniversary to be commemorated ecumenically. And in this respect, the year 2017 marks the end of the controversial age of Reformation.

Critical research into the Zwinglian Reformation arose in the period of historicism and liberalism in the 19th century. The pioneers of this research accomplished important achievements, especially by publishing critical editions of Zwingli’s works. At the same time, they interpreted Zwingli as a liberator and educator of the people rather than as a theologian. In the twentieth century, research perspectives multiplied. Zwingli has been taken more seriously as a theologian, and the tight alliance between the Reformation and politics has been emphasized. The intricate political structure and the Republican mentality of the Confederation deeply shaped the character of the Swiss Reformation. Zwingli was its central figure, but the Swiss Reformation should be called a Communal Reformation ( Gemeindereformation ). Having many similarities to the Wittenberg Reformation, it is nevertheless an independent variety within the pan-European Reformation movements. We must, therefore, study the Swiss Reformation with its own distinct development and dynamics, as well as within its interconnected European-wide network.

The Grand Narrative of the liberation of Scripture has long taken for granted that the late medieval Catholic Church took a negative, if not repressive, attitude towards vernacular Bible reading; that the Scriptures were only opened up for the masses with the advent of Luther and the Reformers; and that the Catholic authorities reacted by intensifying their repressive policy. Though explicitly criticized in scholarly literature over the last decade, this Grand Narrative, or Protestant Paradigm, continues to pop up in confessionally-colored scholarly publications, as well as in accounts of the Reformation that are destined for a general audience. The present essay examines three incarnations of the Grand Narrative in Dutch Protestant Bible culture. Firstly, it has been argued that the Bibles published by William Vorsterman (not only the edition of 1528, but all subsequent editions) betray sympathies with the upcoming Reformation; secondly, that the printer-publisher Jacob van Liesvelt was beheaded on account of the protestantizing marginal glosses in his Bibles, especially the 1542 edition; and thirdly, that his widow Maria Ancxt continued to print Protestant Bibles from the late 1540s until the early 1560s, in obvious violation of the anti-heresy edicts, yet without being harassed by the Antwerp authorities. The aim of this article is to debunk these incarnations of the Grand Narrative.

Although the Protestant Reformation has traditionally been the focus of research on early modern England, the last two decades have witnessed a rapid increase in scholarship on the experience of the country’s Catholics. Questions surrounding the implementation of the Catholic Reformation in England have been central since the topic’s inception as a subject of academic interest, and the field has more recently captured the attention of, amongst others, literary scholars, musicologists and those working on visual and material culture. This article is a position paper that argues early modern English Catholicism, though not doing away with all continuities from before the country’s definitive break with Rome, was fully engaged with the global Catholic Reformation, both being influenced by it, but also impacting its progression. Whether through reading and writing, or more physical expressions of mission and reform, English Catholicism was a vital part of the wider Catholic Reformation.

The Reformation came to Norway along with Danish annexation of political and ecclesiastical power. For this reason, Norwegian history writing seldom appreciated the history of the Norwegian Reformation, and preferred to look further back to the history of the Middle Ages in search of national, as well as religious, roots of Norwegian Christianity. This was already the case in late sixteenth and early seventeenth century Norwegian historical writing. In nineteenth century historical research, the strategy was underpinned by focussing on the medieval period of Christianization: Norwegian Christianity was imported from the West, from England. Here, the Pope was not at all important. Instead, some key Reformation values were addressed in a kind of “proto-Reformation” in the eleventh and twelfth centuries. The King was the ruler of the church; native, Old Norse language was used and promoted; and the people (strongly) identified themselves with their religion.

Structural problems of communities affected by the “Slovak Reformation,” issues with accepting the situation or simply the relationships among various cultural phenomena, like literacy or language policies, are key aspects in studying the impact of the Reformation in Hungary, especially with respect to Slovaks. Information gathered from the Reformation had a direct and long-lasting impact on the formation of vernacular language, as well as on the search for and the construction of an ethnic identity. Searching for evidence left by the Slovak presence in the Reformation movement thus presents challenging though notable problems for Slovak historiography. The confessional division and its political as well as cultural implications have evoked long-lasting discussions among historians as well as politicians. This study focuses on the most relevant issues within these processes.

With the focus on Calvinist Reformation I propose a case study on Hungarian Puritanism that will allow further extrapolations, projections, and some general remarks regarding the entire process of the Hungarian Reformation. This paper draws on the findings of my research examining the reception of English Puritanism in early modern Royal Hungary and Transylvania. I intend to unearth the problematic aspects of cultural and intellectual transfers in an attempt to decipher the intricacies of how Puritan-Calvinist ideas were accepted and incorporated in the religious culture of Hungarian Calvinists. My concern is primarily related to the receiving Hungarian context and its historical evolution. For both the Hungarian Reformation and Hungarian Puritanism appear to have been newly emerging religious cultures resulting from a mixed tradition consisting of transferred ideas and native components. My contention is that the process of transfers and translations are not mechanical takeovers, borrowings or replacements, but a rather complex hermeneutical process of understanding, explaining and applying ideas to the needs of the receivers. One of the major findings of my article is that the application of the concept of long Reformation to the Hungarian case, in line with the latest developments of the field, will not only provide a more suitable historical framework, but it will put to use a repertoire of methodological novelties nurturing the understanding of the entire process of the Reformation based on the transfers of ideas and their consequent reception.