Protestant History and Identity in Sixteenth-Century Europe

The reforming movements of the 16th century were constantly being attacked by Rome for breaking the unity of the Apostolic Church. To counter these accusations the reformers turned to questions of 'tradition', 'history' and 'identity' in order to define and express the religious, political and social ideals of their movement. Though this debate was carried on with great vigour and spawned an enormous corpus of literature, a unifying concept of Protestant identity proved elusive; the process produced only divergent theological conclusions and conflicting social and political goals. These volumes present a coherent set of archive-based studies which examine and interpret the issues of identity and history so fundamental to the reformers. They examine the most important problems addressed, including the relationship between belief and locality in the formation of religious identity, the limitations to a coherent identity in protest, the effects of success on Protestant identity, and the nature of history as it applies to God's Church. This is an original and comprehensive treatment of the European Reformation and of the leading reformers' minds.