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The role played by artistic, literary, historical and theological representations in the establishment of the European Reformation has attracted scholarly attention over the years. While they were generally regarded as a significant means of conveying the evangelical message, particularly in a society with a low average literacy rate, this scholarly consensus was then seriously challenged by objecting that their meaning must have remained opaque to those who couldn't read and interpret their sometimes multilayered imagery and their verbal and figurative messages. This volume, which publishes some of the papers delivered at the Fourth Reformation Research Consortium Conference held in Bologna, May 15th-17th, 2014, is an attempt to examine the visual intelligibility of the European Reformation by a comparative, multiconfessional and multidisciplinary analysis of examples taken from both the Catholic and the Protestant world in the Early Modern and Modern Era, with particular reference to the figurative arts, but also to history and theology. All the case studies included here examine their peculiar subjects with regard to their religious and artistic contexts, in order to understand their historical significance in a new fashion, combining approaches from political history, history of arts, historiography, anthropology, philosophy and theology. Thus, the volume offers a very rich outline of how visual culture and representation through arts was embodied in very different cultural portraits and images.
About the author
Dr. Patrizio Foresta ist wissenschaftlicher Mitarbeiter an der Fondazione per le scienze religiose Giovanni XXIII in Bologna, Italien.Dr. Rainer Kobe studied history and art history at the University of Trier (doctorate 2013). He published on Anabaptist history and confessionalism in the arts in early modern times.Dr. Herman A. Speelman is Postdoctoral Research Fellow in Early Modern Reformed Theology at the Theological University of Kampen, the Netherlands.Dr. Zsombor Tóth is Senior Research Fellow at the Institute for Literary Studies at the Hungarian Academy of Sciences.Dr. Patrizio Foresta ist wissenschaftlicher Mitarbeiter an der Fondazione per le scienze religiose Giovanni XXIII in Bologna, Italien.Dr. Christopher B. Brown is Associate Professor of Church History at Boston University.Dr. Günter Frank ist Direktor der Europäischen Melanchthon-Akademie Bretten und außerplanmäßiger Professor am Karlsruher Institut für Technologie.Dr. Bruce Gordon is Professor of Ecclesiastical History at Yale Divinity School.Barbara Mahlmann-Bauer ist Professorin em. für „Neuere deutsche Literatur“ an der Universität Bern.Tarald Rasmussen ist Professor für Kirchengeschichte an der Universität Oslo.Dr. Violet Soen is Associate Professor for Early Modern History at the Faculty of Arts at the University of Leuven.Dr. Zsombor Tóth is Senior Research Fellow at the Institute for Literary Studies at the Hungarian Academy of Sciences.Dr. Günther Wassilowsky ist Professor für Kirchengeschichte an der Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin.Prof. Dr. Siegrid Westphal ist Inhaberin des Lehrstuhls für Geschichte der Frühen Neuzeit an der Universität Osnabrück sowie Direktorin des Forschungszentrums Institut für Kulturgeschichte der Frühen Neuzeit.
Summary
The role played by artistic, literary, historical and theological representations in the establishment of the European Reformation has attracted scholarly attention over the years. While they were generally regarded as a significant means of conveying the evangelical message, particularly in a society with a low average literacy rate, this scholarly consensus was then seriously challenged by objecting that their meaning must have remained opaque to those who couldn’t read and interpret their sometimes multilayered imagery and their verbal and figurative messages. This volume, which publishes some of the papers delivered at the Fourth Reformation Research Consortium Conference held in Bologna, May 15th–17th, 2014, is an attempt to examine the visual intelligibility of the European Reformation by a comparative, multiconfessional and multidisciplinary analysis of examples taken from both the Catholic and the Protestant world in the Early Modern and Modern Era, with particular reference to the figurative arts, but also to history and theology. All the case studies included here examine their peculiar subjects with regard to their religious and artistic contexts, in order to understand their historical significance in a new fashion, combining approaches from political history, history of arts, historiography, anthropology, philosophy and theology. Thus, the volume offers a very rich outline of how visual culture and representation through arts was embodied in very different cultural portraits and images.
Foreword
The volume publishes some of the papers delivered at the Fourth Reformation Research Consortium Conference held in Bologna, May 15th–17th, 2014. Its goal is to examine the visual intelligibility of the European Reformation by a comparative, multiconfessional and multidisciplinary analysis of examples taken from the Catholic and the Protestant world in the Early Modern and Modern Era, with particular reference to the figurative arts, history and theology. It offers a very rich outline of how visual culture and representation through arts was embodied in different cultural portraits and images.
