Description
Book SynopsisIn colorful detail, Calvin Lane explores the dynamic intersection between reform movements and everyday Christian practice from ca. 1000 to ca. 1800. Lowering the artificial boundaries between “the Middle Ages,” “the Reformation,” and “the Enlightenment,” Lane brings to life a series of reform programs each of which developed new sensibilities about what it meant to live the Christian life. Along this tour, Lane discusses music, art, pilgrimage, relics, architecture, heresy, martyrdom, patterns of personal prayer, changes in marriage and family life, connections between church bodies and governing authorities, and certainly worship. The thread that he finds running from the Benedictine revival in the eleventh century to the pietistic movements of the eighteenth is a passionate desire to return to a primitive era of Christianity, a time of imagined apostolic authenticity, even purity. In accessible language, he introduces readers to Cistercians and Calvinists, Franciscans and Jesuits, Lutherans and Jansenists, Moravians and Methodists to name but a few of the many reform movements studied in this book. Although Lane highlights their diversity, he argues that each movement rooted its characteristic practice – their spirituality – in an imaginative recovery of the apostolic life.
Trade ReviewA superb study of Christian devotion and spirituality in medieval, Reformation and early modern times. Breaking through the old periodization paradigm, this fresh narrative focuses on how people prayed, believed, worshiped, and practiced the faith in an age of change and reform. Highly recommended!
-- Timothy George, Beeson Divinity School, Samford University
Calvin Lane’s Spirituality and Reformproposes an attractive alternative to traditional narratives and timelines of premodern Western Christian reform. . . . Spirituality and Reform is an appealing interpretation of premodern Western Christianity and a useful survey of recent topical literature. It continues and advances current scholarly trends with accessible and memorable structure and prose. It may not single-handedly bring about the deconstruction of tedious historiographical barriers, but it certainly makes a clear case for why such deconstruction is necessary. * Church History: Studies in Christianity and Culture *
A superb study of Christian devotion and spirituality in medieval, Reformation and early modern times. Breaking through the old periodization paradigm, this fresh narrative focuses on how people prayed, believed, worshiped, and practiced the faith in an age of change and reform. Highly recommended!
-- Timothy George, Beeson Divinity School, Samford University
Table of ContentsIntroduction: Spirituality & Reform
1.The Spiritual Landscape: The Mass in the Middle Ages
2.The Spiritual Landscape: Mediating the Holy in the Middle Ages
3.The Spirituality of High Medieval Reform Movements: Popes & Monks
4.Medieval Mysticism & Reform
5.The Spirituality of Late Medieval Reform Movements: Pushing the Boundaries
6.Sixteenth-Century Reformations: The Sacraments
7.Sixteenth-Century Reformations: Preaching, Sacred Space, & Music
8.Sixteenth-Century Reformations: Pastoral Care & the Life Cycle
9.Sixteenth-Century Reformations: Early Modern Catholicism
10.Spirituality & the Encounter: Opportunities for a Primitive Church
11.Spirituality & the Bloody Theater: Martyrdom in the Middle Ages and Early Modernity
12.Religions of the Heart: New Movements of the Seventeenth & Eighteenth Centuries
Conclusion: Post Tenebras Lux?
Appendix 1: Timeline
Appendix 2: Shortlist of Primary Sources in English
