Reformation and the Culture of Persuasion
Reformation and the Culture of Persuasion
Why did people choose the Reformation? What was in the evangelical teaching that excited, moved or persuaded them? Andrew Pettegree tackles these questions directly by re-examining the reasons that moved millions to this decisive and traumatic break with a shared Christian past. He charts the separation from family, friends, and workmates that adherence to the new faith often entailed and the new solidarities that emerged in their place. He explores the different media of conversion through which the Reformation message was communicated and the role of drama, sermons, song and the book. His findings offer a persuasive new answer to the critical question of how the Reformation could succeed as a mass movement in an age before mass literacy.
- A groundbreaking new interpretation of the process of religious conversion during the European Reformation
- Explores the role of sermons, song, drama, pamphlets, books and woodcuts
- Essential reading for students in early modern European history, religious history, and Reformation studies
Reviews & endorsements
"Reformation and the Culture of Persuasion will sustain and fuel the still lively debate about the character, impact and progress of this momentous movment of religious renewal."
-Times Literary Supplement
"There is a great deal to ponder in this illuminating book. It is written with Pettegree's customary clarity, it selflessly doffs its cap to the work of other historians, and it rightly stresses that the business of religious persuasion was often a communal, shared event. There are...ideas to which not everyone will assent, but the book certainly forces the reader to question many assumptions about how early modern people took the dramatic step of casting off one faith so that they might embrace another."
-Jonathan Wright, H-Net
"The rewards of this book are the products of Pettegree's profound acquaintance with the Reformed world across linguistic boundaries and his intellectual creativity. He has digested the principles and the scholarly fruits of interdisciplinary research and drawn them into a coherent relationship to one another...this is a survey of lasting historiographic significance."
-Susan C. Karant-Nunn, University of Arizona, Church History
Product details
July 2005Paperback
9780521602648
252 pages
228 × 151 × 22 mm
0.41kg
10 b/w illus.
Available
Table of Contents
- 1. The dynamics of conversion
- 2. Preaching
- 3. Militant in song
- 4. Reformers on stage
- 5. Visual culture
- 6. Industry and intellect
- 7. Pamphlets and persuasion
- 8. New solidarities
- 9. The culture of belonging.
