Publisher Description

How did state power impinge on the religion of the ordinary person? This perennial issue has been sharpened as historians uncover the process of 'confessionalization' or 'acculturation', by which officials of state and Church collaborated in ambitious programs of Protestant or Catholic reform, intended to change the religious consciousness and the behaviour of ordinary men and women. In the belief that specialists in one area of the globe can learn from the questions posed by colleagues working in the same period in other regions, this 2005 volume sets the topic in a wider framework. Thirteen essays, grouped in themes affording parallel views of England and Europe, Tsarist Russia, and Ming China, show a spectrum of possibilities for what early modern governments tried to achieve by regulating religious life, and for how religious communities evolved in new directions, either in keeping with or in spite of official injunctions.

Table of Contents

Preface Thomase Mayer; Introduction Stanford E. Lehmberg and James D. Tracy; Part I. Lived Religion and Official Religion: 1. The alternative moral universe of religious dissenter in Ming-Qing China Richard Shek; 2. Ecclesiastical elites and popular belief and practice in seventeenth-century Russia Robert O. Crummey; 3. The state, the churches, sociability, and folk belief in the seventeenth-century Dutch Republic Willem Frijhoff; 4. Communal ritual, concealed beliefs: layers of response to the regulation of ritual in Reformation England Caroline J. Litzenberger; Part II. Forms of Religious Identity: 5. Spirits of the Penumbra: deities worshipped in more than one Chinese Pantheon Romeyn Taylor; 6. Orthodoxy and revolt: the role of religion in the seventeenth-century Ukrainian Uprising against the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth Frank E. Sysyn; 7. The Huguenot minority in early modern France Raymond A. Mentzer; 8. State religion and Puritan resistance in early seventeenth-century England Paul Seaver; Part III. The Social Articulation of Belief: 9. False miracles and unattested dead bodies: investigations into popular cults in Early Modern Russia Eve Levin; 10. Liturgical rites: the medium, the message, the messenger, and misunderstanding Susan C. Karant-Nunn; 11. Self correction and social change in the Spanish Counter-Reformation Sara T. Nalle; 12. The disenchantment of space: Salle church and the Reformation Eamon Duffy; An Epilogue at the Parish Level: 13. Popular religion and the reformation in England: a view from Cornwall Nicholas Orme.

Review

Review of the hardback: '… a very courageous book.' Journal of Ecclesiastical History

Promotional

Thirteen 2005 essays show worldwide perspectives of how early modern governments attempted to regulate religious life.

Review Quote

"The offering of contrasting yet parallel views of the interaction of religion with public authority should be richly suggestive of new lines of interpretation and inquiry to specialists accustomed to working in one or another of the global areas addressed. Many instructive interconnections and comparisons between and among these worlds are embedded in this collection and are waiting to be teased into view by the attentive reader. The standard of scholarship and presentation throughout is impressive." Renaissance Quarterly Torrance Kirby, McGill University

Promotional "Headline"

Thirteen 2005 essays show worldwide perspectives of how early modern governments attempted to regulate religious life.

Description for Bookstore

These 2005 essays afford parallel views of England and Europe, Tsarist Russia, and Ming China, and show a spectrum of possibilities for what early modern governments tried to achieve by regulating religious life, and for how religious communities evolved in new directions, in keeping with or in spite of official injunctions.

Description for Library

These 2005 essays afford parallel views of England and Europe, Tsarist Russia, and Ming China, and show a spectrum of possibilities for what early modern governments tried to achieve by regulating religious life, and for how religious communities evolved in new directions, in keeping with or in spite of official injunctions.

Details