Lay Piety (Renaissance and Reformation)

Introduction

Lay piety is an admittedly imprecise term that points to two important aspects of Renaissance and Reformation religious life. By “lay” it distinguishes the bulk of Europe’s population from the clergy, that is, the 5–10 percent of the population who took special religious vows (such as poverty, chastity, and obedience) to representatives of the institutional Church or who held special offices within various churches. Such clergy, or “clerics,” therefore, had spiritual and ministerial responsibilities and, at times, enjoyed a distinct legal status. “Piety” designates the outward expression of religious belief. Thus, “lay piety” refers, most obviously, to the religious practices and, by implication, faith of those who were not clergy—at least 90 percent of the population of Renaissance and Reformation Europe. Yet, lay piety did not exclude clergy. Not only did clergy sometimes play key roles in pious rituals, but the clergy and laity shared many practices and beliefs. Clergy and laity could be members of the same family, and they interacted in households, clubs, and offices. Although clerical training, especially university education in theology, could lead to different understandings of piety and the clergy engaged in some distinctive pious activities, many male and female “religious” shared a spiritual culture with laymen and women. That culture’s pious manifestations were as diverse as the population itself, and they were embedded into many aspects of daily life, including family relationships, judicial practice, science, education, and even peasant revolts. Given the common conviction that God was immanent and the world superenchanted, most activities could have some spiritual component. Regulating such piety was central to all the 16th- and 17th-century reform movements, and, by the end of the 17th century, religious rites and activities became the primary way by which individuals identified heretics and fellow believers. This article emphasizes commonly accepted expressions of lay piety rather than the extensive writings about clerical perceptions of, and attempts to dictate, it, although in some cases clerical arguments form part of a book’s analysis. Also omitted are themes such as apocalypticism that influenced lay piety but that modern scholars have written about primarily from a clerical perspective and using clerical sources.

General Overviews

Many studies of the Renaissance and Reformation include some aspect of lay piety, and synthetic works often present changes in piety as marking fundamental transformations in society and culture. Thomas 1971 provides one of the earliest and most influential interpretations connecting religious and socioeconomic developments and integrating historical and anthropological methods. A veritable scholarly industry has since developed to test Thomas’s theses in other locations or through more focused regional or thematic studies. Bossy 1985, Scribner 1987, and Delumeau 1990 also show the influence of anthropological and sociological methods and develop influential interpretations for the period as a whole, albeit presented in different formats: Bossy 1985 is an essay, Scribner 1987 a series of scholarly articles, and Delumeau 1990 a comprehensive national study. In the 1990s syntheses continued to experiment with different analytical parameters and styles in order to best depict pious attitudes and practices and their historical context and significance. In Duffy 1992 the emphasis is on late medieval and Reformation England and the debates specific to that nation, while Marsh 1998 shares the same time and place but is more interested in presenting a comprehensive survey of practices and their folkloric complements. Niccoli 1998 situates lay piety within a continuum of religious life occurring over several centuries. Recent debates have highlighted lay piety itself as a discrete historical topic. Walsham 2008 links piety and disenchantment to nuance traditional perspectives that often suggest a linear religious progression.

Bossy, John. Christianity in the West, 1400–1700. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1985.
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Classic treatment of the social effects of the Reformation. Focuses on the transformation from a communal piety emphasizing repression of the seven deadly sins to a more individualistic piety stressing the need to uphold the Ten Commandments. Argues that, in the process, social cohesion is transformed and even breaks down, fundamentally eliminating any conception of a European Christian commonwealth.
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Delumeau, Jean. Sin and Fear: The Emergence of a Western Guilt Culture, 13th–18th Centuries. Translated by Eric Nicholson. New York: St. Martin’s, 1990.
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Synthesis and expansion of ideas underlying several previous books that argued for a late medieval and early modern culture of fear. Here Delumeau describes how such fears produced a culture obsessed with sin and guilt, especially the difficulties of salvation. His documentation is primarily from intellectuals, but both he and later scholars have projected his thesis onto early modern society as a whole.
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Duffy, Eamon. The Stripping of the Altars: Traditional Religion in England, c. 1400–c. 1580. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1992.
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Centerpiece of a contentious debate in English history over loyalty to the medieval church. Duffy argues for widespread popular devotion to traditional piety and gradual acceptance of the Reformation and marshals extensive evidence in support of the durability of many pious practices. His theses about gradualism and the communal nature of late medieval piety have been widely cited in scholarship about other regions.
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Marsh, Christopher W. Popular Religion in Sixteenth-Century England: Holding Their Peace. London: St. Martin’s, 1998.
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Although not an especially profound analysis, this book provides the most comprehensive discussion of early modern pious practices in a manageable size. Worth using as an introduction to appreciate the diversity of lay piety.
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Niccoli, Ottavia. La vita religiosa nell’Italia moderna: Secoli XV–XVIII. Rome: Carocci, 1998.
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One of Italy’s leading scholars of popular piety here summarizes her extensive knowledge. Aspects of lay piety are interwoven with more institutional and theological debates in such a way that the sometimes oblique relationships among the three are clarified.
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Scribner, Robert W. Popular Culture and Popular Movements in Reformation Germany. London: Hambledon, 1987.
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Outstanding collection of articles by one of the most influential scholars of early modern Germany and European piety. Articles treat broad theoretical questions (chapter 3, “Oral Culture and the Diffusion of Reformation Ideas” [pp. 49–70]) and narrower topics (chapter 7, “Preachers and People in the German Towns” [pp. 123–144]). Model for the study of lay piety in its diverse forms.
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Thomas, Keith. Religion and the Decline of Magic: Studies in Popular Beliefs in Sixteenth- and Seventeenth-Century England. London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1971.
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Pioneering and comprehensive analysis of popular piety in early modern England. Argues for a transformation from a communalist to individualist spirituality. His definitions of “magic” and “religion” and the causal relationship among England’s socioeconomic evolution, cultural guilt, and challenges to traditional piety have been disputed, although many summaries turn his complex ideas and extensive data into caricature. Foundational work.
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Walsham, Alexandra. “The Reformation and the Disenchantment of the World Reassessed.” Historical Journal 51.2 (2008): 497–528.
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Cogently summarizes the “disenchantment thesis” of Max Weber, which has recently reemerged as a central theoretical issue in discussions of early modern piety, and use by later scholars of Weber’s thesis. Argues against the progressivism and presumed rationalism of Protestantism. Suggests seeing transformations in piety as more cyclical or oscillating phenomena and accepting cultural and religious inconsistencies.
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Collections

Many recent collections are devoted to one or several aspects of lay piety (see Confraternities, Demons and Apparitions, Penance and Indulgence, Parish Life and Church Maintenance, Piety in the Family and Household, Religious Space, Time, and Environment, Saints and Angels, and Music and Art). A few authors have, however, been brave enough to tackle the subject as a whole. Not surprisingly, Robert Scribner co-edited one of the first (Scribner and Johnson 1996), and its conclusions can be applied more broadly than its title implies. In Scribner 2001, Lyndal Roper presents the articles Scribner wrote soon before his death, and they represent his broad vision for the analysis of lay piety and popular culture. Dixon, et al. 2009 adds to this vision by focusing on one aspect of lay piety—religious toleration and diversity in early modern Europe—that was just receiving serious academic study in Scribner’s last years. Their collection shows how considerations of religious diversity add a valuable layer of understanding to many aspects of lay piety. Frijhoff 2002 unites a wide variety of topics in lay piety but studies them for a region that many collections and monographs neglect.

Dixon, C. Scott, Dagmar Freist, and Mark Greengrass, eds. Living with Religious Diversity in Early Modern Europe. Farnham, UK: Ashgate, 2009.
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Case studies, most of which involve aspects of lay piety, of many European regions. Represents many of the best and most influential trends in the study of lay piety and introduces the reader to the theme of “religious toleration,” which has recently shaped research on village and communal piety.
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Frijhoff, Willem. Embodied Belief: Ten Essays on Religious Culture in Dutch History. Hilversum, The Netherlands: Verloren, 2002.
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Specific studies covering many aspects of lay piety in a region often neglected in more synthetic, international surveys.
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Scribner, Robert W. Religion and Culture in Germany, 1400–1800. Edited by Lyndal Roper and preface by Thomas A. Brady Jr. Leiden, The Netherlands: Brill, 2001.
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Posthumously published collection of essays by one of the most influential scholars of early modern culture. The first two articles synthesize his thought on popular culture while the rest of the articles stress his three main foci in the decade before his death: vision, community, and magic. The chapters by Roper and Brady set Scribner and his work in context.
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Scribner, Robert W., and Trevor Johnson, eds. Popular Religion in Germany and Central Europe, 1400–1800. London: St. Martin’s, 1996.
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Collection of research by younger scholars highlights innovations, and the potential for studies, in popular religion. Topics range from witch trials and heresy to confession and prophecy. Many of the scholars have gone on to influence the analysis of early modern lay piety.
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Reference Resources

In the 1990s and 2000s, major scholars edited synthetic guides to the Renaissance, Reformation, and early modern Europe that included dozens of essays by leading researchers. Aspects of lay piety are often treated in at least several articles, reflecting the many areas influenced by pious practices and the shared pious culture of clergy and laity. Probably the most advanced of these collections is the earliest (Brady, et al. 1994–1995), while Ruggiero 2002 and Hsia 2006 provide excellent but briefer essays aimed at a slightly less academic audience. These collections also reflect their editors’ biases, with Ruggiero 2002 more focused on society and culture while Hsia 2006 emphasizes religion and the social and institutional consequences of doctrinal changes. Whitford 2008 is specifically geared toward junior scholars and historiography rather than fellow academics and subject summaries. Other disciplines affecting the historical study of lay piety have produced similar syntheses. The most useful and manageable for those beginning to integrate folklore into their historical analyses is Lindahl, et al. 2002.

Brady, Thomas A., Jr., Heiko Oberman, and James Tracy, eds. Handbook of European History, 1400–1600: Late Middle Ages, Renaissance and Reformation. 2 vols. Leiden, The Netherlands: Brill, 1994–1995.
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State-of-the-field interpretations and bibliographies of almost any topic relating to early modern European history. While not focused specifically on lay piety, many articles contain aspects of it. See, especially, “Elements of Popular Belief” by Robert W. Scribner (Vol. 1, pp. 231–262), “The Popular Reformation” by Peter Blickle (Vol. 2, pp. 161–192), and “New Patterns of Christian Life” by Hans-Christoph Rublack (Vol. 2, pp. 585–607).
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Hsia, R. Po-chia, ed. A Companion to the Reformation World. Oxford: Blackwell, 2006.
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Several articles summarize main themes in lay piety. See, especially, “Society and Piety” by Larissa Taylor (pp. 22–38), “The New Parish” by Bruce Gordon (pp. 411–425), and “Magic and Witchcraft” by James A. Sharpe (pp. 440–454). Does particularly well at highlighting the integration of clerical and lay piety and challenging facile distinctions in the study of piety more generally.
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Lindahl, Carl, John McNamara, and John Lindow, eds. Medieval Folklore: A Guide to Myths, Legends, Tales, Beliefs, and Customs. New York: Oxford University Press, 2002.
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Arranged like an encyclopedia, the Guide provides brief descriptions and references for many aspects of early modern folklore that rarely figure as the primary subject of historical academic analysis but were widely accepted and integrated into more commonly analyzed beliefs. A good starting point for information on fairies, dwarves, and misty ladies.
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Ruggiero, Guido, ed. A Companion to the Worlds of the Renaissance. Malden, MA: Blackwell, 2002.
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Although less focused on religious topics than the Reformation version, this volume in the Companion series has precise introductions to aspects of lay piety by R. Po-chia Hsia (“Religious Cultures,” pp. 333–348), Linda Woodbridge (“Renaissance Bogeymen,” pp. 444–459), and Guido Ruggiero (“Witchcraft and Magic,” pp. 475–490).
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Whitford, David M. Reformation and Early Modern Europe: A Guide to Research. Kirksville, MO: Truman State University Press, 2008.
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Designed for entry-level graduate students, the essays in this collection describe the latest historiography and provide thorough, primarily English-language, bibliographies. See, especially, the articles by Kathryn A. Edwards (“Popular Religion,” pp. 331–354) and H. C. Erik Midelfort (“Witchcraft,” pp. 355–395).
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Primary Sources

Many of the sources for lay piety are brief and fragmentary or come from judicial or financial records, circumstances that often make it difficult to present them in a coherent and easily readable collection. Until the 17th century, moreover, the clergy wrote many of the more holistic works that presented lay piety. Such authorship does not automatically invalidate their statements, but a reader has to be especially careful when assessing such authors’ interpretations (especially condemnations), distinguishing between lay and clerical piety, and determining if such a distinction is even valid. Edwards and Sutch 2008, Homza 2006, and Rubin 2009 unite diverse sources or present a single primary source that illustrates many aspects of lay piety. All emphasize lay attitudes and practices, rather than doctrinal formulations, and edit their documents with a general readership in mind.

Edwards, Kathryn A., and Susie Speakman Sutch, eds. and trans. Leonarde’s Ghost: Popular Piety and the Appearance of a Spirit in 1628. Kirksville, MO: Truman State University Press, 2008.
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Translation of a French manuscript describing the haunting of a poor, young woman for two months. Illustrates many common aspects of lay Catholic piety and their promotion, acceptance, and opposition by clerical and secular authorities. Designed for undergraduate use, this translation comes with a detailed, contextual introduction.
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Homza, Lu Ann, ed. and trans. The Spanish Inquisition, 1478–1614: An Anthology of Sources. Indianapolis, IN: Hackett, 2006.
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English translation of inquisitorial documents that illustrates both legitimate and illegitimate pious practices and the beliefs underlying them. The introduction provides the best summary of Inquisition structures and procedures currently available. Excellent for classroom use.
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Rubin, Miri, ed. Medieval Christianity in Practice. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2009.
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Contains forty-two brief primary documents covering many aspects of lay piety. Although the title says “medieval,” many sources are from the 14th and 15th centuries. Especially strong on parish life and the cult of the saints.
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Communal Piety

It is generally accepted that piety provided a spiritual glue for early modern communities and integrated transcendental and secular bonds. While many books combine analyses of public and private piety, reflecting their interrelatedness, the texts here highlight especially the communal manifestations of early modern piety. Dykema and Oberman 1993 approaches the topic thematically, with an extensive collection of case studies concerning one of the most pervasive and subversive aspects of late medieval religion. Christian 1981 and Gillespie 1997 include many aspects of lay, village piety within a national survey. Most studies, however, focus on discrete regions or even towns. Luria 1991 and Forster 1992 exemplify this approach and assess the relationship between piety and community building for Catholics in Germany and France, respectively. Both Poska 1998 and Mayes 2004 concentrate more on rural experience and the ways that villagers felt religious reform threatened community cohesion. Collinson and Craig 1998 and Duffy 2001 both analyze the English context but do so using different techniques. The articles in Collinson and Craig 1998 allow readers to compare towns’ responses to the English Reformations, while Duffy 2001 applies social and economic analysis to describe one region’s resistance to external interference and its gradual acceptance of the Protestant Reformation.

Christian, William A. Local Religion in Sixteenth-Century Spain. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1981.
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Pioneering work of historical anthropology that remains an essential source. His focus is on communal Christianity and parish life, and his conclusions complement those of John Bossy (see Bossy 1985, cited under General Overviews).
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Collinson, Patrick, and John Craig, eds. The Reformation in English Towns, 1500–1640. New York: St. Martin’s, 1998.
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Case studies of lay piety and urban life that highlight religious change in particular. Valuable corrective to many works that start with theology and then move to pious practices; here piety takes pride of place.
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Duffy, Eamon. The Voices of Morebath: Reformation and Rebellion in an English Village. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2001.
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Microhistorical analysis of the response of one village and its hinterland to the changing religious programs of England’s 16th-century rulers. Important for its detail and the light it sheds on local concerns and piety.
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Dykema, Peter A., and Heiko A. Oberman, eds. Anticlericalism in Late Medieval and Early Modern Europe. Leiden, The Netherlands: Brill, 1993.
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Comprehensive treatment of anticlericalism, a central part of lay religious culture in the late Middle Ages and often seen as one of the Reformation’s triggers. Articles cover both lay and clerical attitudes toward the clergy and the ways these attitudes manifested in pious practice. Essential background for understanding the Reformation.
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Forster, Marc R. The Counter Reformation in the Villages: Religion and Reform in the Bishopric of Speyer, 1560–1720. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1992.
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Exemplary local study of village and regional religious culture with a particular focus on the interaction between episcopal management and lay piety. Wide chronological scope allows analysis of Speyer’s continued Catholicism and the impact of the Thirty Years War.
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Gillespie, Raymond. Devoted People: Belief and Religion in Early Modern Ireland. Manchester, UK: Manchester University Press, 1997.
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Through his focus on immanence, Gillespie portrays an Ireland more united by spiritual assumptions than divided by confessions. Although the conclusion is debatable, it contains many excellent examples of lay piety and is a model for how to find historical materials when the main collections have been destroyed.
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Luria, Keith P. Territories of Grace: Cultural Change in the Seventeenth-Century Diocese of Grenoble. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1991.
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Stresses village devotions in a region that saw waves of Catholic and Protestant influence. Based on detailed local records about saints’ cults, an essential part of pre-Reformation piety and a point of contention among Lutheran, Reformed, Anabaptist, and Dissenter reformers.
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Mayes, David. Communal Christianity: The Life and Loss of a Peasant Vision in Early Modern Germany. Leiden, The Netherlands: Brill, 2004.
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Persuasive local study arguing for the durability of village and peasant religious culture in the face of confessional pressures by secular and religious authorities. Based on thorough archival research in Upper Hesse.
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Poska, Allyson M. Regulating the People: The Catholic Reformation in Seventeenth-Century Spain. Leiden, The Netherlands: Brill, 1998.
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Innovatively integrates detailed archival research with anthropological surveys of local piety and argues for intimate connections between lay piety and local sociability, legends, and landscape in northwestern Spain. Focus is on communal and individual pious practice, not ecclesiastical mandates.
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Confraternities

Early modern confraternities illustrate the integration of individual and communal social and spiritual needs. Terpstra 1995 represents some of the best early confraternity studies in its focus on the members’ agency, especially the dialogue between members and ecclesiastical authorities over public pious expressions. Polizzotto 2004 shows newer developments, given that some of the most detailed recent studies have been of urban Italian confraternities. Other work has examined confraternities in other places and times, however, and Donnelly and Maher 1999 and Dompnier and Vismara 2008 exemplify that trend, with Donnelly and Maher remaining within a European Catholic context while Dompnier and Vismara compare confraternal piety and organization on three continents over four hundred years.

Dompnier, Bernard, and Paola Vismara, eds. Confréries et dévotions dans la catholicité moderne, mi-XVe–début XIXe siècle. Rome: École française de Rome, 2008.
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Integrates materials from Europe, Asia, and the Americas; as such, it well illustrates the local influences on this widespread form of piety. The long chronological scope allows authors to pose suggestive questions on, for example, the influence of modernity, the question of disenchantment, and the evolution of Catholicism.
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Donnelly, John Patrick, and Michael W. Maher, eds. Confraternities and Catholic Reform in Italy, France, and Spain. Kirksville, MO: Thomas Jefferson University Press, 1999.
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Many studies of lay confraternities emphasize Italy, and this collection shows a nice geographic balance that enhances comparative analysis. Allows for greater appreciation of local circumstances and their effect on lay piety.
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Polizzotto, Lorenzo. Children of the Promise: The Confraternity of the Purification and the Socialization of Youths in Florence, 1427–1785. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004.
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This book’s focus on one confraternity over a long time in a well-studied city permits readers to appreciate the influence of politics, economics, and social networks on lay piety. Well illustrates the pragmatic benefits of pious foundations.
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Terpstra, Nicholas. Lay Confraternities and Civic Religion in Renaissance Bologna. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1995.
DOI: 10.1017/CBO9780511523502Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
The stress here is on how confraternities allowed the people of Bologna to express their spirituality and piety outside the frameworks designed by ecclesiastical authorities. Good illustration of the confraternities’ social functions and of the constraints Catholic Reform could impose on such lay institutions.
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Poor Relief and Hospitals

As an expression of Christian love, charity was frequently funneled in pre-Reformation communities through ecclesiastical institutions, when it was institutionally administered at all. In the late 15th century, secular governments increasingly claimed jurisdiction over hospitals, poor houses, and other welfare foundations, and the challenges by Protestant reformers to ecclesiastical establishments and good works accelerated changes in charity’s administration during the 16th and 17th centuries. Much has been written about the social, economic, and political consequences for charity of Europe’s Reformations, but the four works here emphasize the connection between lay piety and relief institutions. David Michael D’Andrea’s analysis of one hospital in a provincial Italian town (D’Andrea 2007) distinguishes his work from books such as Schen 2002 and Fehler 1999, which typify earlier studies on charity and piety. By examining large cities with multiple outlets for poor relief, Schen and Fehler more easily trace broader patronage patterns within both lay and clerical society, whereas D’Andrea thickly describes the Trevisan context and, through comparison with charity in large cities, distinguishes the effects of urban size and attendant familial and social networks on poor relief and piety. Safley 2003 is an outgrowth of the author’s impressive work on charitable institutions in Augsburg. Unlike that work, here his contributors place more stress on lay piety, and his collection successfully depicts the consequences for communities and pious practices of religious debates and transformations.

D’Andrea, David Michael. Civic Christianity in Renaissance Italy: The Hospital of Treviso, 1400–1530. Rochester, NY: University of Rochester Press, 2007.
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Describes the way in which both the city hospital and the lay confraternity attached to it functioned as medical, spiritual, and political institutions. Particularly valuable because Treviso was not a dominant city in Renaissance Italy; it provides a useful counterpoint to patterns developed through the study of large city-states such as Florence and Venice.
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Fehler, Timothy G. Poor Relief and Protestantism: The Evolution of Social Welfare in Sixteenth-Century Emden. Aldershot, UK: Ashgate, 1999.
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Detailed case study of the transformations and continuities in poor relief as a major commercial center becomes Protestant.
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Safley, Thomas Max, ed. The Reformation of Charity: The Secular and Religious in Early Modern Poor Relief. Leiden, The Netherlands: Brill, 2003.
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Brings together impressive regional studies of Catholic and Protestant approaches to the poor and poor relief, allowing readers to appreciate the Reformation’s influence on social welfare. Emphasis is on the practical reorganization of institutions and charitable practices rather than theories of poverty and ecclesiastical directives.
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Schen, Claire S. Charity and Lay Piety in Reformation London, 1500–1620. Burlington, VT: Ashgate, 2002.
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Chronicles the changing fortunes of charitable institutions and the laity’s attitudes toward and involvement with them during a period of rapid and frequent confessional change. Given that London’s population more than doubled during this period, social welfare programs were strained, and the process of reforming charity was particularly tense.
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Public Ceremonies and Processions

Public processions often provided vivid examples of civic and personal piety, but many analyses of public rituals and the piety they demonstrated are found in texts that make their religious aspects tangential, interweave piety into analyses dominated by discussions of reception and authority, or see such ceremonies as parts of the general religious culture that is the book’s true concern (General Overviews). (See the Oxford Bibliographies Online article on Civic Ritual.) The two books here depict the religious aspects of public ceremonies more extensively than most, although both stress the interaction of civic and spiritual concerns. Brown 2011 describes how the sacred and secular were intertwined in the portrayal of a sacralized Renaissance Bruges, while Sanudo 2008 vividly portrays religious ceremony in a city well known for its dramatic and profound civic and religious culture. By providing the perspective of a Venetian senator and author, Sanudo’s diaries suggest how public religious rituals displayed and created civic piety while also forming and being interpreted in light of personal piety.

Brown, Andrew. Civic Ceremony and Religion in Medieval Bruges, c. 1300–1520. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2011.
DOI: 10.1017/CBO9780511933882Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
Public ceremonies from the late medieval Burgundies provided models for many early modern courts, and this book explores the shifting relationships between lay and ecclesiastical ritual and between urban identity and communal Christianity in such rituals. It emphasizes how public religious ritual can simultaneously reflect personal piety and personal claims to power.
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Sanudo, Marino. Venice, cità excelentissima: Selections from the Renaissance Diaries of Marin Sanudo. Edited by Patricia H. Labalme and Laura Sanguineti White and translated by Linda L. Carroll. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2008.
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Fluid and clear English translation of an important diary from the Italian Renaissance. Has a large section in which he describes religious rituals and processions.
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Confessionalization and Social Discipline

Two of the most influential theories in Reformation studies since the early 1980s have been the twinned concepts of confessionalization (or confession-building) and social discipline. Confessionalization is the process of distinguishing one religious denomination from another through doctrinal statements (known as confessio in Latin) and institutional development and reform. Social discipline describes the ways populations are made to conform to the confessional parameters of either a “new” or “reformed” confession, such as those of Lutheran Saxony and Calvinist Geneva, or an “old” or “established” church, such as the Roman Catholic. Studies of social discipline especially use lay piety to assess the success of confessional programs (much like the reformers themselves did) or to determine the extent to which or means by which “ordinary” people formed their own faith. Although several scholars initially developed confessionalization theory, the work of Heinz Schilling is most frequently linked to its origins, and Schilling 1992 collects many of his most influential summaries and case studies. Hsia 1989 benefits from a decade of international research on these themes and provides a clear and thorough survey of the ways in which they most affected lay piety. Other scholars in the 1970s and 1980s studied similar processes outside the Holy Roman Empire but did not call them social discipline; Delumeau 1977 is the most influential analysis. Scholars of Catholicism repeatedly focus on institutions, such as the Inquisitions, designed to structure lay piety (social discipline) and define Catholicism (confessionalization) and whose records provide so much information about them. Kamen 1998 and Del Col 2006 are recent synthetic revisions by leading scholars of the Spanish and Italian Inquisitions, respectively, that challenge popular and academic stereotypes.

Del Col, Andrea. L’Inquisizione in Italia: Dal XII al XXI secolo. Milan: Oscar Mondadori, 2006.
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Comprehensive survey by a leading scholar of the Roman Inquisition. Combines analysis of the institutional and legal factors with treatment of inquisitors’ responses to lay piety and the ways the Inquisition itself can reveal such piety. Essential foundation for understanding the Catholic Reform’s effect on the Italian laity.
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Delumeau, Jean. Catholicism between Luther and Voltaire: A New View of the Counter-reformation. Translated by J. Moiser and introduction by John Bossy. London: Burns and Oates, 1977.
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Best known for its argument about the “dechristianization” of Europe prior to Catholic Reform movements—an interpretation that has been effectively challenged—this book is filled with examples of lay piety, both typical and unusual. Worth reading for those examples and the context of debates over dechristianization.
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Hsia, R. Po-chia. Social Discipline in the Reformation, Central Europe, 1550–1750. London: Routledge, 1989.
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Clearest and most concise summary of the ideas about confessionalization and social discipline in English. Integrates case studies from the entire region involving both Catholics and Protestants to illustrate the strengths and weaknesses of this theory.
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Kamen, Henry. The Spanish Inquisition: A Historical Revision. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1998.
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Pointed challenge to many of the stereotypes about the Spanish Inquisition that are so prevalent in English-language scholarship. Based on decades of research in Spanish archives. Essential reading to understand the interaction between ecclesiastical authorities and lay piety of all types in 16th- and 17th-century Spain.
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Schilling, Heinz. Religion, Political Culture, and the Emergence of Early Modern Society: Essays in German and Dutch History. Leiden, The Netherlands: Brill, 1992.
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One of the key figures in the development and implementation of the theories of confessionalization and social discipline presents his ideas. He also shows how he applies them in two distinct regions. Although the emphasis here is institutional, his theories have been fundamental for the understanding of lay piety during the last thirty years, particularly in the Holy Roman Empire.
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Case Studies

Although scholars of the early modern Holy Roman Empire have recently compiled a seven-volume synthesis, organized by region, of confessional divisions and their consequences (Schindling and Ziegler 1990–1997), debates over social discipline and confessionalization have inspired others to undertake detailed, regional, archival studies that have produced some of the most revealing research on lay piety, communal networks, and family life. Not surprisingly, many such books concentrate on imperial territories where Evangelical (Dixon 2002) and Catholic (Forster 2001) confessions dominated. Other scholars have explicitly chosen to concentrate on territories where strong religious minorities lived, such as the Huguenots (Luria 2005), or where changing attitudes toward religious toleration transformed the status of various confessions (Pollmann 2011). Some have focused on even smaller areas, such as major cities, in order to assess the effect of personal networks, religious faith, and political programs on religious debates and, even, violence (Diefendorf 1991). Still others have studied social discipline outside the framework of obvious confessional history, such as Sara Nalle and Richard Kagan. Nalle 1992 describes the disputes over religious change in Spain, a land where traditional lay piety was less explicitly challenged yet non-Christians, presumed or actual, were part of communal life. Kagan 1995 concentrates on a specific case of political prophecy and examines the ways in which spiritual and political considerations intersected. Nalle 2001 is another exemplary microhistory of a religious “radical” that gives an intimate glimpse into popular religious life and attitudes and into attempts to control what were perceived as heterodox and subversive implications.

Diefendorf, Barbara. Beneath the Cross: Catholics and Huguenots in Sixteenth-Century Paris. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1991.
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Classic and persuasive description of the intersection of social, political, and spiritual concerns leading to and culminating in the French Wars of Religion, especially the St. Bartholomew’s Day Massacre.
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Dixon, C. Scott. The Reformation and Rural Society: The Parishes of Brandenburg-Ansbach-Kulmbach, 1528–1603. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2002.
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Studies on social discipline and confessionalization frequently rely on the archival collections amassed in larger cities and by courts. Here village records show peasants exercised impressive control over their religious life, a situation that calls into question what it meant to be “Lutheran” in early modern Germany.
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Forster, Marc R. Catholic Revival in the Age of the Baroque: Religious Identity in Southwest Germany, 1550–1750. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2001.
DOI: 10.1017/CBO9780511496493Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
Model text demonstrating how to assess the effectiveness of social discipline, the laity’s influence on their own religious life, and the parameters of piety. Particularly impressive at showing the integration of groups and categories too frequently treated as distinct and binary: laity/clergy, popular/elite, and educated/illiterate.
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Kagan, Richard L. Lucrecia’s Dreams: Politics and Prophecy in Sixteenth-Century Spain. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1995.
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Case study of the intersection of politics, religion, and personal ambition. Especially valuable for the way it depicts the melding of pragmatism and spirituality in a society often stereotyped as blindly religious.
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Luria, Keith P. Sacred Boundaries: Religious Coexistence and Conflict in Early-Modern France. Washington, DC: Catholic University of America Press, 2005.
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Analysis of one French region (Poitou) and the Catholic and Huguenot communities that coexisted there. More than a study of theories of religious tolerance, a popular theme in recent historiography, the book focuses on mundane expressions of piety, particularly those often seen as presenting firm boundaries: business relationships, marriage alliances, and burials.
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Nalle, Sara T. God in La Mancha: Religious Reform and the People of Cuenca, 1500–1650. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1992.
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Detailed archival study of lay piety in one Spanish province and of the effect of Catholic Reform on that piety. It stresses the interaction of ecclesiastical doctrines and institutions and of lay religious enthusiasm in revising and reviving lay piety.
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Nalle, Sara T. Mad for God: Bartolomé Sánchez, the Secret Messiah of Cardenete. Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia, 2001.
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Compelling study of local religion in early modern Spain focusing on the debates between Bartolomé Sanchez and his inquisitors. Model example of the microhistorical method, it well illustrates the complex factors influencing lay piety and ecclesiastical control.
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Pollmann, Judith. Catholic Identity and the Revolt of the Netherlands, 1520–1635. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011.
DOI: 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199609918.001.0001Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
Assesses the changing perspective of Catholics toward the Revolt of the Netherlands and the rise of Dutch Calvinism. A welcome and insightful corrective to a national historiography that too often presents the region as a bastion of either dissent or toleration.
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Schindling, Anton, and Walter Ziegler, eds. Die Territorien des Reichs im Zeitalter der Reformation und Konfessionalisierung: Land und Konfession, 1500–1650. 7 vols. Münster, Germany: Aschendorff, 1990–1997.
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Survey of the processes of social discipline and confessionalization throughout the territories of the Holy Roman Empire with each volume focusing on a different region and the chapters on smaller communities. Although emphasizing institutional structures, it is foundational for any study on the intersection between lay and secular authorities and lay pious practices.
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Demons and Apparitions

As part of a community of the living and the dead, pre-Reformation Christians and post-Reformation Catholics believed it was possible for the dead to return to the world. In addition, demons, angels, and other supernatural figures populated the cosmos and could interact with living humans. Protestant theologians and scholars would prune this overabundant tree leaving only angels as humanity’s helpers and labeling the rest demons. Protestant practice, however, retained more aspects of Catholic and pre-Reformation cosmology than made the more orthodox comfortable. Earlier research on demons and apparitions as manifested in lay piety surveys accounts of apparitions and situates them within general themes in Catholic piety (Christian 1981) or dissects records involving particular cases of apparitions and those who mediated their interactions with the living (Levi 1988). Demonology, the study of demons, played a fundamental theoretical role in the witch trials and natural philosophy, although some demonologists were also judges. Books on the subject can be found in the Oxford Bibliographies Online article on the Witch Hunt. Edwards 2002 and Parish and Naphy 2002 expand analyses of the actual experience of demons and apparitions into other thematic areas, such as folklore, natural philosophy, and theological debates over superstition. Marshall 2007 traces the social and intellectual networks in a famous British ghost story to reveal both its historical evolution and the choices scholars make when constructing histories. Two recent PhDs have interpreted ghost stories within national contexts. Chesters 2011 assesses the French ghost story as an example of the social and cultural tensions of the French Reformation, Wars of Religion, and early Enlightenment, while Reiger 2011 deals with the fundamental problem of how German Lutherans could continue to believe in ghosts when doctrinally all human souls were supposed to go to heaven or hell immediately after death.

Chesters, Timothy. Ghost Stories in Late Renaissance France: Walking by Night. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011.
DOI: 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199599806.001.0001Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
Detailed and thorough literary analyses of printed accounts of apparitions of the dead in early modern France. Takes as his starting point the common assumption that Protestants equated ghosts and devils and arrives at a more nuanced conclusion.
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Christian, William A. Apparitions in Late Medieval and Renaissance Spain. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1981.
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Combination of historical and anthropological analysis that illustrates the wide variety of apparitions early modern Spaniards saw as plausible: demons, saints, the Virgin Mary, ghosts, white ladies, and sprites, among others. It demonstrates the role of these figures in early modern Catholicism and the mixed reaction of the clergy to them. Especially strong at situating these apparitions within a continuum of religious experience.
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Edwards, Kathryn A., ed. Werewolves, Witches, and Wandering Spirits: Traditional Belief and Folklore in Early Modern Europe. Kirksville, MO: Truman State University Press, 2002.
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Examines the ways in which figures too frequently classified as “merely” folkloric were integrated into aspects of lay piety that are more commonly studied. Provides both theoretical and mundane examples of this integration.
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Levi, Giovanni. Inheriting Power: The Story of an Exorcist. Translated by Lydia G. Cochrane. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1988.
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The clerical status of exorcists was disputed during the Renaissance, and this book explores the social standing and supernatural power of one local exorcist who came to the attention of the Inquisition. Describes the communal status of lay exorcists and the extent to which they were integrated into villages and towns.
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Marshall, Peter. Mother Leakey and the Bishop: A Ghost Story. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007.
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Provides historical context for a famous British ghost and explores the evolution of stories about that ghost through the 20th century. A fascinating experiment in how to tell such stories that blend the fictional and the factual in different ways over time.
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Parish, Helen, and William Naphy, eds. Religion and Superstition in Reformation Europe. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2002.
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Detailed study of the various meanings of superstition in theory and practice in early modern Europe and their relationship to lay piety. The introduction provides a particularly valuable discussion of the historical varieties and meanings of superstition.
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Reiger, Miriam. Der Teufel im Pfarrhaus: Gespenster, Geisterglaube und Besessenheit im Luthertum der Frühen Neuzeit. Stuttgart: Franz Steiner, 2011.
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Focuses on the tension between orthodox Lutheran interpretations of ghosts—that they could be only demons—and, through repeated examples, the belief of committed Lutherans that the spirits of the dead were haunting them. Based on copious examples from archives and early printed books, the analysis is rather traditional but the examples are fascinating.
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Gender and Women

Gender, women, and lay piety have been linked since women’s studies moved beyond the history of great women in the 1970s. Lay piety was often demonstrated in families, parishes, and neighborhoods, exactly those areas in which women were most active. From the beginning of such analysis, research methodologies varied. Crawford 1993 surveys women’s experiences horizontally, giving readers a wide-ranging sense of women’s interests and opportunities, while Roper 1989 provides a more vertical analysis of one city to portray what it meant for women to belong to a “godly community.” Mack 1992 continues the earlier pattern of examining exceptional women, although, in her case, their spirituality was extreme rather than their lineage or learning. More recent studies have connected female piety to household and familial responsibilities (French 2008) and to broader questions in early modern history, such as the degree to which women could mold their religious experiences and pious practices during the more regulated era of the Reformations. Works such as Morrison 2000 assess how women’s participation in public piety that took them outside their immediate communities, like pilgrimage, affected attitudes toward these activities and allowed women to claim greater freedoms. Schutte 2001 compares experiences common to laywomen and nuns to ascertain the influence of gender norms and Catholic Reform programs on female piety, while Diefendorf 2004 considers similar questions but within the context of the French Wars of Religion and 17th-century reform movements. Attempts have also been made to study laywoman’s piety and gender roles in a global context. The most successful have been those that concentrate on Christians’ assumptions about and Christianity’s effect on sexuality (Wiesner-Hanks 1999).

Crawford, Patricia. Women and Religion in England, 1500–1720. London: Routledge, 1993.
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Wide-ranging description of female piety among the laity and clergy that integrates women with and without theological training. Explores the effects of social and economic change as well as the radical religious movements of the English Civil War.
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Diefendorf, Barbara B. From Penitence to Charity: Pious Women and the Catholic Reformation in Paris. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004.
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Analyzes diverse source material to develop a conclusion with more wide-ranging influence than its title may suggest. Sees women’s piety as a product of women’s agency and not imposed on them by religious authorities. Integrates this interpretation into other patterns in early modern French historiography, thus challenging those who see women’s studies as a niche field.
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French, Katherine L. The Good Women of the Parish: Gender and Religion after the Black Death. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2008.
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Concludes that late medieval Englishwomen frequently equated the parish with their household and that the concerns they had for the parish’s maintenance and furnishing reflect those they had for their homes and families. Challenges recent scholarship that has downplayed the role of the Black Death in English society and piety.
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Mack, Phyllis. Visionary Women: Ecstatic Prophecy in Seventeenth-Century England. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1992.
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Surveys the activities and, in some cases, writings of female visionaries, whom scholars relying on programmatic texts often portray as subversive and dangerous. Explains how the radical women of the English Revolution were an outgrowth of existing pious movements and reflected aspects of female piety without being “representative.” A starting point for work on lay prophecy, even outside the English context.
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Morrison, Susan Signe. Women Pilgrims in Late Medieval England: Private Piety as Public Performance. London: Routledge, 2000.
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Pilgrimage was a central part of late medieval piety, but few studies concentrate purely on the female experience. Relying primarily on literary texts, Morrison fills that gap and provides an entertaining and informative portrait of women on pilgrimage and the fears such voyages entailed.
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Roper, Lyndal. The Holy Household: Women and Morals in Reformation Augsburg. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1989.
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Analyzes the effect of the emphasis placed by the Reformation on the “godly community” on women’s lives and piety in a leading town of southwestern Germany. Served as a model for later local and regional studies of female piety and the impact of the Reformation on gender roles.
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Schutte, Anne Jacobson. Aspiring Saints: Pretense of Holiness, Inquisition, and Gender in the Republic of Venice, 1618–1750. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2001.
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Although slightly beyond the Reformation chronologically, this analysis of hundreds of archival cases grapples with one of the main tensions in early modern Catholic Reform: the outpouring of mystical devotion among both lay and clerical women and authorities’ attempts to evaluate and control it.
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Wiesner-Hanks, Merry. Christianity and Sexuality in the Early Modern World: Regulating Desire, Reforming Practice. London: Routledge, 1999.
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Global survey of the effect of Christianity on sexual norms and practices by one of the leading scholars of early modern gender. Excellent starting point before reading more precise, local research.
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Good Works and Salvation

It has been argued that the pursuit of good works, and their attendant post-mortem benefits, drove late medieval piety. Although the best recent research has rarely made such extreme claims, it provides vivid examples of the pious networks, presumed benefits, and motivational aspects of good works. Through an analysis of the doctrines supporting and the devotions occurring at the great medieval German pilgrimage site of Wilsnack, Bynum 2007 develops suggestive theses about blood and Eucharistic piety before the Reformation. Rivard 2009 has narrower theological and historiographical implications but describes clearly and intelligently a common pious practice (the blessing) done to and by the laity. Much research on lay piety after the Reformation, when Protestants and Dissenters opposed “works righteousness,” considers the effects of the removal of good works from the salvific process. The classic and unsurpassed work on purgatory, Le Goff 1984 sets the context for analyzing such transformations, while Tingle 2012 provides a specific regional context to assess alterations in works-driven piety during the French Wars of Religion, state consolidation, and Enlightenment. Harline 2003 also considers a region riven by religious war. Its case studies from the Low Countries demonstrate the continued dynamism of works of piety despite dangers from confessional opponents and suspicious authorities. Cohen and Cohen 1993 avoids the direct tensions found in confessionally divided territories, but the Roman judges the authors portray fear the potential for heresy and heterodoxy in the lay piety that comes before their courts.

Bynum, Caroline Walker. Wonderful Blood: Theology and Practice in Late Medieval Northern Germany and Beyond. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2007.
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Uses the famous German pilgrimage center of Wilsnack as the start for an analysis of blood piety in late medieval Europe, building on her earlier research about the body and physicality in medieval Christianity. Especially valuable is the treatment of pious objects found at Wilsnack and other sites where Christ’s blood was the focus of pilgrimage.
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Cohen, Thomas V., and Elisabeth S. Cohen. Words and Deeds in Renaissance Rome: Trials before the Papal Magistrates. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1993.
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Thorough case studies of nine trials from Rome’s city archives that provide vivid and well-written examples of “daily life” in a Renaissance city and the ways lay piety was intertwined in many aspects of that life.
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Harline, Craig. Miracles at the Jesus Oak: Histories of the Supernatural in Reformation Europe. New York: Doubleday, 2003.
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Gripping stories of the supernatural in the life of men and women, with a special focus on the Low Countries. Clearly articulates the complexities of this “superenchanted” world and describes the ways in which the laity and clergy interacted to develop the pious culture of early modern Europe.
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Le Goff, Jacques. The Birth of Purgatory. Translated by Arthur Goldhammer. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1984.
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Classic analysis of the rise of the concept of purgatory in late medieval thought and its effects on pious practices. While its dating of purgatory’s rise has been debated, no other work has superseded this one.
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Rivard, Derek A. Blessing the World: Ritual and Lay Piety in Medieval Religion. Washington, DC: Catholic University of America Press, 2009.
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Useful introduction to the medieval practice of blessings, a central part of lay piety and one authorities often feared that the laity perverted. Such blessings would be a point of contention for both Protestant and Catholic reformers alike.
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Tingle, Elizabeth C. Purgatory and Piety in Brittany, 1480–1720. Farnham, UK: Ashgate, 2012.
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Rather than challenging the theological foundations of purgatory, this book concentrates on its effects on lay piety through a detailed analysis of regional and local archives. Particularly valuable for its chronological scope and geographical focus, given the influential role parts of Brittany played in the French Wars of Religion.
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Death and Burial

The history of death has long been seen as allowing scholars to synthesize many aspects of early modern life, given the centrality of Christianity in European culture and the centrality of death to Christianity. In the late 1970s, scholars used wills to ascertain beliefs about the afterlife and good death with mixed success, but two French studies shaped future research for decades: Ariès 1981 and Vovelle 1983. Both have a broad chronological scope—Ariès from Antiquity and Vovelle from 1300 to the 20th century—and both equate changes in bonds between the living and the dead and in the living’s engagement with the process of dying to fundamental transformations in cultural norms and social practice. While French-language scholarship often takes sides in the Ariès-Vovelle debates, English-language research is commonly in dialogue with Ariès alone. Strocchia 1992 places death rituals within a continuum of contemporary ritual practices, and Koslofsky 2000 emphasizes the rituals surrounding death but connects them to Lutheran theology. Eire 2002 transplants to Madrid the model of will-based research but supplements it with detailed readings of the deaths of two, exceptionally pious, 16th-century Spaniards: King Philip II of Spain and Saint Teresa of Avila. Gordon and Marshall 2000 unites research on theology, piety, and mediations between the two; almost every article considers some aspect of lay piety. By focusing on comparative death practices, Harding 2002 allows readers to assess the effects of culture and confession on lay piety concerning death. Especially important for its synthesis of beliefs and piety associated with death and for its inclusion of less orthodox aspects (see Demons and Apparitions) is Marshall 2002, which also situates death within the sudden confessional transitions of the English Reformation.

Ariès, Philippe. The Hour of Our Death. Translated by Helen Weaver. New York: Knopf, 1981.
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Classic survey of beliefs about and practices involving death that ranges from Greco-Roman to modern Europe and integrates analysis of texts, tombs, other art, and religious space. Particularly influential and debated has been his documentation of the transition from a communal, familiar, and even at times comforting death to a solitary, hidden, and frightening one.
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Eire, Carlos M. N. From Madrid to Purgatory: The Art and Craft of Dying in Sixteenth-Century Spain. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2002.
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Combines detailed statistical analysis of wills from early modern Madrid with microhistorical studies of the deaths of King Philip II and Teresa of Avila. Concludes that piety emphasizing purgatory and the cult of the dead drove Spanish Catholicism throughout the 16th century.
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Gordon, Bruce, and Peter Marshall, eds. The Place of the Dead: Death and Remembrance in Late Medieval and Early Modern Europe. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2000.
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Focus is on lived experience, especially for the laity, although it covers more theoretical issues as well. Valuable for its chronological, geographic, and methodological scope.
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Harding, Vanessa. The Dead and the Living in Paris and London, 1500–1670. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2002.
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Comparative analysis of burial practices and attitudes toward the dead and death in the two largest metropolitan areas in northern Europe. Stresses the proximity between living and dead bodies and the role of confessional divisions in forming treatment of the dead.
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Koslofsky, Craig. The Reformation of the Dead: Death and Ritual in Early Modern Germany, 1450–1700. London: Macmillan, 2000.
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Describes the theological foundations for Lutheran beliefs about and activities toward the dead and integrates this programmatic material with careful studies of funeral and burial practices.
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Marshall, Peter. Beliefs and the Dead in Reformation England. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002.
DOI: 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780198207733.001.0001Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
Wide-ranging survey of the impact of the religious debates and cultural changes in England on attitudes toward and treatment of the dead. Particularly valuable for its analysis of popular beliefs about the afterlife and ghosts, two topics often treated cursorily or ignored in studies of death.
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Strocchia, Sharon T. Death and Ritual in Renaissance Florence. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1992.
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Precise archival study of mortuary practices in a city often seen as representing the Renaissance. Part 2 connects death rituals to other Florentine rituals to argue that religious ritual must be appreciated holistically.
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Vovelle, Michel. La mort et l’Occident: De 1300 à nos jours. Paris: Gallimard, 1983.
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Of his five books on death and society, this is the most comprehensive and best represents the conclusions of one of the leading scholars of medieval and early modern death. Part of a dialogue with Philippe Ariès and informed by detailed archival research. For more popular and illustrated books, readers should turn to those he produced in the 1990s.
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Penance and Indulgence

Good works aided Christians in salvation because of the penitence they reflected and the ways that penance affected the human soul and gave satisfaction to God. As such, penitence and its expression through penance were key to pre-Reformation and Catholic soteriology, while Protestant Reformers contested penance’s link to salvation. Influencing aspects of the current analysis of penance and works are debates that arose in the late 1970s over the “guilt culture” of late medieval Catholicism, and Tentler 1977 is one of the most cited proponents of the argument that the penitential system placed an undue burden on both the laity and clergy. More recent reassessments have seen this system as arising from a negotiation between Christian doctrine and pastoral needs. Swanson 2007 situates that most scorned of late medieval ecclesiastical documents, the indulgence, into its cultural context and finds its use and place in Christian piety to be more complex than the polemics of the Protestant reformers made it out to be. Cohn 1988 follows a more socioeconomic analysis of Catholic penitential practices, property transfers, and death rituals. Combining broad interpretations with detailed case studies, the chapters in Lualdi and Thayer 2000 well represent the current, diverse state of the field.

Cohn, Samuel Kline. Death and Property in Siena, 1205–1800: Strategies for the Afterlife. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1988.
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Award-winning analysis of the evolution of lay and clerical pious practices that takes into account the dominance of purgatory and intercession in late medieval piety, challenges to this economy of piety by the Protestant Reformation, implementation of Catholic Reform and Tridentine programs, and individual agency in preparing for the afterlife.
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Lualdi, Katharine Jackson, and Anne T. Thayer, eds. Penitence in the Age of Reformations. Aldershot, UK: Ashgate, 2000.
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Exceptionally focused collection of articles that covers many of the social, cultural, and religious permutations of this central doctrine in late medieval and early modern theology. Emphasizes the experience of confession and the fine balance between spiritual needs and penitential programs.
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Swanson, Robert. Indulgences in Late Medieval England: Passports to Paradise? Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2007.
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Comprehensive synthesis of indulgences’ roles that has much broader implications than its title implies. Well illustrates the tensions that existed in the development of theories underlying indulgences, the promotion of indulgences to lay and clerical alike, and the application of an arithmetical model to salvation. Avoids facile statements about late medieval “insecurity.”
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Tentler, Thomas N. Sin and Confession on the Eve of the Reformation. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1977.
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Although the focus is on printed and more programmatic literature, this book played a central role in debates about a late medieval “guilt culture” and its importance in generating followers for the Reformation among the laity. While this interpretation has been challenged, it remains prominent in studies of penitence and lay piety more generally.
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Magic and Witchcraft

Research in magic and witchcraft is one of the most active fields in early modern European studies and plays important roles in the analysis of gender, women, cosmology, theology, medicine, judicial structures, social relationships, and natural philosophy. The books cited here are not classic books on the field as a whole, although some are; rather, they are among the best and most current emphasizing the interconnections among magic, witchcraft, and lay piety. They illustrate themes and methodologies, not the field’s evolution. Rowlands 2003 and Seitz 2011 exemplify how sociology and anthropology can integrate witchcraft into local piety and religious frameworks but use these methods to emphasize very different topics. For Rowlands, the witch trials show a judiciary committed to its faith yet skeptical about some of witchcraft’s more extreme ramifications; for Seitz, witch trials demonstrate the extent to which early scientists shared the piety and theology of their less “scientific” contemporaries. The best recent practitioner of this historical anthropology of witchcraft is Robin Briggs, and Briggs 2007 is the culmination of a career in the Lorraine archives. Yet, Briggs has also integrated other methodologies into his work, and Briggs 2002 provides a thought-provoking assessment about psychology’s use in historical research. Women’s and gender studies have influenced witchcraft studies since its inception (Case Studies), and the politicization of gender studies of witches has fostered errors, such as the presumption that all witches were women and the inflation of numbers of women killed in witch trials (up to six million in one of the more absurd assessments). Apps and Gow 2003 unites widely available statistics and linguistic analyses of terms employed for witches to show that the percentage of women accused and convicted of witchcraft varied greatly by region. Equally important is Gibson 1999, which describes the production process of the small pamphlets and booklets that spread witch stories and offers valuable guidelines for how scholars should read these texts. Witchcraft studies also illuminate lay piety when they describe the fine distinctions between licit and illicit magic. The authors of Davies 2007 and Wilson 2000 have made such distinctions in analyzing the activities and success of lay, communal magical practitioners, the cunning folk of English history. Although they carry their research into the 20th century, the bulk of their examples come from late medieval and early modern England and Europe, respectively.

Apps, Lara, and Andrew Gow. Male Witches in Early Modern Europe. Manchester, UK: Manchester University Press, 2003.
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Brief description of male witches in early modern Europe drawing on the archival research of other historians. Designed to challenge the stereotype of witchcraft as “female,” it does so convincingly.
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Briggs, Robin. Witches and Neighbors: The Social and Cultural Context of European Witchcraft. Oxford: Blackwell, 2002.
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Detailed and methodologically innovative analyses of witchcraft trials. Focus is on the duchy of Lorraine, but Briggs combines approaches from both French and German witchcraft historiography. Balanced use of psychoanalytical theories with a challenging conclusion in which he advocates how and when psychoanalysis can be valuable for historical studies.
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Briggs, Robin. The Witches of Lorraine. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007.
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Culmination of decades of precise study of one of the most active areas of witchcraft persecution. Especially valuable for his treatment of local context and of the complex motivations behind such trials. He has placed his extensive research notes for this and other books online.
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Davies, Owen. Popular Magic: Cunning-Folk in English History. New York: Hambledon Continuum, 2007.
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Only book-length, historical analysis of the role of “cunning folk,” the magical practitioners who were so pervasive in early modern England but who were rarely accused of witchcraft. Offers a broader understanding of what was magical, its social context, and relationship to official religion for scholars studying early modern witchcraft and magic.
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Gibson, Marion. Reading Witchcraft: Stories of Early English Witches. London: Routledge, 1999.
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Dense and thought-provoking analysis of the context in which the surviving records about English witch trials were produced. Particularly valuable for its description of the publication and editorial processes, it should be required reading for anyone working with these documents.
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Rowlands, Alison. Witchcraft Narratives in Germany: Rothenburg, 1561–1629. Manchester, UK: Manchester University Press, 2003.
DOI: 10.7228/manchester/9780719052590.001.0001Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
Local study based on extensive archival evidence of a city and region located near the heart of Europe’s witch trials. Rowland reveals the thought processes of the accused, accusers, and judges and illustrates the pragmatism and lack of gullibility among Rothenburg’s lay judges. An important corrective to claims about a “witch craze.”
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Seitz, Jonathan. Witchcraft and Inquisition in Early Modern Venice. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2011.
DOI: 10.1017/CBO9780511894886Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
Recent revision of earlier scholarship on the sometimes fraught relationship between Venice’s laity and the Roman Inquisition. Valuable and plausible suggestions about the ways in which the histories of medicine, witchcraft, and science should be integrated. Entertaining and thought-provoking.
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Wilson, Stephen. The Magical Universe: Everyday Ritual and Magic in Pre-modern Europe. New York: Hambledon and London, 2000.
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Broad synthesis covering the early Middle Ages to the 19th century that complements more common case studies. Although his emphasis on magic and religion as protective is somewhat monocausal, the book is particularly useful for the number of examples and stories it provides.
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Case Studies

Scholars of witchcraft and lay piety have taken full advantage of the Italian microhistorical movement that began in the 1960s. Intended to illustrate the commonality of exceptional experiences in daily life, and in some cases to question what was exceptional, microhistorical studies were rooted in exactly the type of detailed local archival research that has been shown to be essential for analyzing the witch trials. One of the early pioneers of such work, and probably the best-known Italian historian of the Renaissance among English-language readers, is Carlo Ginzburg, and Ginzburg 1983 is a translation of his 1966 book that describes one group of Italian villagers whose nocturnal activities would lead to accusations of witchcraft. While Ginzburg’s analyses frequently borrow from anthropology, folklore, and Jungian psychology, later microhistorians employ other methods, too. Behringer 1998 provides a sociological and judicial means of understanding community support for a lay exorcist. Sharpe 2000 and Robisheaux 2009 both place family and gender dynamics at center stage in witch trials where the accused women are ultimately convicted.

Behringer, Wolfgang. Shaman of Oberstdorf: Chonrad Stoeckhlin and the Phantoms of the Night. Translated by H. C. Erik Midelfort. Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia, 1998.
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Microhistorical study of a magical practitioner in early modern Bavaria that illustrates the diverse attitudes and activities underlying magical practices and the ways in which they were a fundamental part of Christianity. Also demonstrates the tensions within official institutions designed to control such activities.
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Ginzburg, Carlos. The Night Battles: Witchcraft and Agrarian Cults in the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries. Translated by John Tedeschi and Anne Tedeschi. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1983.
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Influential challenge to the idea of witches as pagan and evil. The benendanti of northern Italy saw themselves as marked from birth to leave their bodies at night and fight against those who threatened crops and villages. Ecclesiastical authorities were astounded.
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Robisheaux, Thomas. The Last Witch of Langenburg: Murder in a German Village. New York: Norton, 2009.
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Analysis of the decline of witchcraft trials designed for a more general audience. Particularly good at communicating the nuances of family relationships, village life, and regional judicial and intellectual exchange. Excellent descriptions of women’s piety and social networks.
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Sharpe, James. The Bewitching of Anne Gunter: A Horrible and True Story of Deception, Witchcraft, Murder and the King of England. New York: Routledge, 2000.
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Exemplary microhistorical study of the interaction between family relationships and regional and national religious tensions. Anne is both a tool of family ambitions and a believer in the influence of the supernatural on daily life.
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Miracles and Wonders

In a world where God was immanent, miracles and wonders were expected, if unusual, occurrences and avenues for ascertaining God’s will. Even after the Reformation, when Protestant theologians argued that the age of miracles was past, laypeople of all classes and educational levels, and many clergy too, presumed the miraculous would occur. Oldridge 2005 sets the late medieval context, describing the internal logic that allowed people to accept marvelous events. Niccoli 1990 explains how wonders provided an interpretive framework for lay and clerical alike, a framework that placed daily struggles and political calamities within a divine plan. Walsham 1999 describes the thinking about that plan (God’s providence), and it incorporates a wide range of source material, including examples from lay religious experience and practice, rather than the theological treatises on which such books frequently rely. The Protestant Reformation’s effects on belief in the miraculous, and the pious practices embodying it, are analyzed for England and Germany, respectively, in Crawford 2005 and Soergel 2012. Crawford focuses on a specific type of marvel, while Soergel writes about one style of text in which wonders were recorded; both grapple with the disjunction between the continued obsession with wonders and miracles and the doctrinal disparagement of them. Carrying the place of miracles in religious faith farther chronologically, Shaw 2006 highlights the durability of interest in wonders and miracles.

Crawford, Julie. Marvelous Protestantism: Monstrous Births in Post-Reformation England. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2005.
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Before and during the Reformation, people with unusual birth defects were often known as “monsters” and seen as portentous. Combines archival and print material involving the same cases to assess the significance of such monstrosities in light of Protestant interpretations of providence and of changing gender roles.
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Niccoli, Ottavia. Prophecy and People in Renaissance Italy. Translated by Lydia G. Cochrane. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1990.
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Later Renaissance Italians saw their era as particularly calamitous, and this book examines the ways in which prophecies about these calamities were disseminated, were integrated with more mundane Christian practices, and provided an intellectual framework. Particularly valuable for its clear descriptions of how astrology and divination were seen as part of Christianity.
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Oldridge, Darren. Strange Histories: The Trial of the Pig, the Walking Dead, and Other Matters of Fact from the Medieval and Renaissance Worlds. London: Routledge, 2005.
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Case studies explicitly chosen for their oddity to modern readers and the way they reveal common concerns of the 15th and 16th centuries. The focus is on lived experience rather than theological pronouncements and, thus, well illustrates the diverse piety of the era.
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Shaw, Jane. Miracles in Enlightenment England. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2006.
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Although the Enlightenment (here defined as 1650–1750) is often presumed to mark humanity’s liberation from a miraculous worldview, this book describes the ways in which intellectuals, theologians, doctors, and less-educated laity continued to accept and even disseminate examples of the miraculous. Complements work by scholars of Catholic Reform (Seitz 2011, cited under Magic and Witchcraft).
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Soergel, Philip M. Miracles and the Protestant Imagination: The Evangelical Wonder Book in Reformation Germany. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012.
DOI: 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199844661.001.0001Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
Although Protestant theologians argued that the age of miracles had passed, this book shows that wonders and even miracles were still experienced and avidly sought. They were also collected and interpreted in special books. Although many authors studied here were clerics, their attitudes were widely shared and their interpretations influential.
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Walsham, Alexandra. Providence in Early Modern England. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999.
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As the care and control of God over the Earth, providence played a central role in early modern understandings of nature, the supernatural, and humanity’s place in the world. It affected everything from the motion of the earth to the wanderings of a child. Using extensive examples, Walsham describes the pervasive influence of providential perception on early modern English society and culture, although her conclusions have a wider scope.
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Parish Life and Church Maintenance

Although the parish and its church remained the fundamental ecclesiastical institution for most Christians before and after the Reformation, analyses of parish piety and church maintenance are often subsumed into studies of other religious themes (Gender and Women) or of village life more generally. The six books here stress that the mundane activities of parish life—sweeping the church, repairing its roof, and providing candles for the altar—were also central parts of Renaissance and Reformation piety. French 2000 especially considers the familial and gender implications for such activities, while Dixon 2002 sees such actions as statements of peasants’ receptivity to religious reform. Spufford 1995 considers the parish context in which religious radicals worked, an environment that often applied different standards about what was dangerous than did ecclesiastical or secular courts. Both Litzenberger 2002 and French, et al. 1997 place parish life within broader assessments of lay piety and agency, and Croix 1980 portrays ecclesiastical institutions and lay piety as forming the heart of Breton identity and communities.

Croix, Alain. La Bretagne aux 16e et 17e siècles: La vie, la mort, la foi. Paris: Maloine, 1980.
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At two volumes and more than 1,500 pages, this is a classic French doctorate that surveys every imaginable aspect of lay piety in early modern Brittany. An abbreviated work was published in 1995 as Cultures et religion en Bretagne aux 16e et 17e siècles (Rennes, France: Apogée).
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Dixon, C. Scott. The Reformation and Rural Society: The Parishes of Brandenburg-Ansbach-Kulmbach, 1528–1603. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2002.
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Studies of the Reformations tend to focus on urban society, and this book benefits from being one of the most recent to expand analysis into the German countryside. Describes well the integration of piety and pragmatics in village life and in the response of peasants to various reform movements.
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French, Katherine L. The People of the Parish: Community Life in a Late Medieval English Diocese. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2000.
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Detailed archival study of the most fundamental unit of English political and religious life: the parish. Focused on Bath and Wells, this book provides insights into the mundane activities of daily life that are often difficult to access.
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French, Katherine L., Gary G. Gibbs, and Beat A. Kümin, eds. The Parish in English Life, 1400–1600. Manchester, UK: Manchester University Press, 1997.
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Collection of case studies describing the particular qualities of parish life and the ways in which spiritual and secular concerns intermingled in parishes. Attempts to provide a model for interpreting parish life and individual experiences within a broader historical framework.
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Litzenberger, Caroline. The English Reformation and the Laity, 1540–1580. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2002.
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Regional study of lay piety set during a time when England’s official religion frequently shifted. Highlights the effects of such shifts and local concerns on daily life and religious practices.
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Spufford, Margaret, ed. The World of Rural Dissenters: 1520–1725. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1995.
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Emphasizing English experience, the contributors analyze the origins and significance of religious movements that were often regarded as bizarre, if not dangerous. Useful introduction to the diversity of religious dissent and its social and economic integration.
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Piety in the Family and Household

Family life in the Renaissance incorporated many pious rituals and objects, from blessings said over food to religious images in the home and amulets on clothes. Their extent and the effects of the Reformations on them have been subjects of research for decades. One of the leading figures in the study of the Lutheran Reformation’s influence on familial piety has been Steven Ozment. Ozment 1983 examines the gender implications for the father’s and family’s increased role as religious educators, and the articles in Forster and Kaplan 2005 attest to the influence of Ozment 1983 and his later studies of family life. The confessional status of early modern families was not always clear-cut, however, and Mentzer 1994 considers how living as a religious minority or in confessionally divided families affected political strategies and piety. Hamling 2010 and Duffy 2006 describe two expressions of piety that served as both supports for and demonstrations of a household’s Christian faith: displaying religious art and reading books of hours. Both Davis 1977 and Cressy 1997 consider familial piety in light of personal and societal bonds. Davis studies one discreet connection: ghosts returning to living relatives. Cressy tackles the three biggest transitions in a layperson’s life and family relationships and analyzes the effect of doctrinal and legal changes on the ways in which such transitions were perceived and practiced.

Cressy, David. Birth, Marriage, and Death: Ritual, Religion and the Life-Cycle in Tudor and Stuart England. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1997.
DOI: 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780198201687.001.0001Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
Comprehensive analysis of the effect of doctrinal changes on key life moments that portrays a tension between secularizing and sacralizing forces. Rich description of daily life among the laity makes early modern English society come alive.
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Davis, Natalie Zemon. “Ghosts, Kin, and Progeny: Some Features of Family Life in Early Modern France.” Daedalus 106.2 (1977): 87–114.
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Describes how early modern society included both the living and the dead and suggests ways that this generational perspective influenced family strategies and lay piety.
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Duffy, Eamon. Marking the Hours: English People and Their Prayers, 1240–1570. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2006.
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Examines both the texts and marginalia of late medieval and early modern prayer books, among the most widely owned documents shaping lay piety. Especially valuable is the emphasis on women’s piety and case studies of books of hours owned by leading figures, such as Sir Thomas More.
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Forster, Marc R., and Benjamin J. Kaplan. Piety and Family in Early Modern Europe: Essays in Honour of Steven Ozment. Aldershot, UK: Ashgate, 2005.
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Ozment has been an influential and, at times, controversial scholar of lay piety and family life, and this collection provides precise regional and thematic studies by students and friends that well illustrate his influence and sometimes challenge his conclusions.
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Hamling, Tara. Decorating the “Godly” Household: Religious Art in Post-Reformation Britain. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2010.
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Lavishly illustrated study of the material culture of early modern piety. While most treatments of religious art focus on that found in churches, other ecclesiastical institutions, and royal households, this book also depicts the objects and images that inspired religious life among families that were less prominent. Published for the Paul Mellon Center for Studies in British Art.
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Mentzer, Raymond A. Blood and Belief: Family Survival and Confessional Identity among the Provincial Huguenot Nobility. West Lafayette, IN: Purdue University Press, 1994.
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Based on a detailed study of the Lacger family archives, this book analyzes the motivations for joining a minority religion at a time when such decisions could lead to a lineage’s destruction. Especially good at integrating spiritual motivations, local context, and pragmatic considerations.
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Ozment, Steven. When Fathers Ruled: Family Life in Reformation Europe. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1983.
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Influential, controversial, and well-written study of the Lutheran Reformation’s effect on family life and the integration of spiritual training into the household. Explores changing gender dynamics, in particular the increased stature of the father as moral and religious guide, and the household for forming personal, Lutheran morality. Influenced many later discussions of confessionalism and social discipline.
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Radical Religion, Iconoclasm, and Religious Violence

Scholars have long debated what constitutes “radical” religion in an age marked by religious violence and revolution, but generally they have accepted the labels given by early modern authors while acknowledging the frequent, anti-“radical” bias of these authors. Key components of lay religious radicalism were often iconoclasm, other forms of violence, and transcending central social norms, such as Dissenter communities who allowed women to preach or Anabaptists who delayed baptism. Crouzet 1990 provides a classic and comprehensive treatment of the logic behind religious violence during the French Wars of Religion, while Wunderli 1992 is a case study of 15th-century religious violence and political protests by German villagers geared to readers new to the field. In the process, he sets the scene for a better appreciation of Reformation violence. Davis 1975 and Wandel 1995 analyze iconoclastic movements stemming from Reformation debates. Since they were published, Davis’s interpretations of religious riot, using the concepts of subversion and inversion and of the confessionalized logic found in the objects and methods of destruction, have molded the interpretation of such actions. Wandel certainly borrows from Davis but provides a more comprehensive reading of the effects of local environments and divisions within confessions. Gregory 1999 gives the most extensive transdenominational analysis of the meaning of martyrdom to the martyrs themselves, their supporters, and their opponents; its emphasis on appreciating martyrdom as central to Christian convictions and not as a functional action has influenced many recent studies. Räisänen 2011 presents a microhistorical analysis of the family and village life of one Anabaptist woman. Given that Protestants and Catholics alike generally mistrusted and often persecuted Anabaptists, the ability to see how an Anabaptist actually functioned within a multiconfessional community is quite valuable.

Crouzet, Denis. Les guerriers de Dieu: La violence au temps des troubles de religion, vers 1525–vers 1610. 2 vols. Seyssel, France: Champ Vallon, 1990.
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Extensive analysis of the practice of and motivations for religious violence during the French Wars of Religion. An essential guide to the period and for Crouzet’s more specialized work on the St. Bartholomew’s Day Massacre, one of the single most bloody events in those wars.
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Davis, Natalie Zemon. Society and Culture in Early Modern France: Eight Essays. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1975.
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The eight articles here have become classic studies of religious violence and social dynamics during the early Protestant Reformation in France and the French Wars of Religion. Particularly influential and relevant for lay piety have been her interpretations of religious violence and of social and gender inversion.
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Gregory, Brad. Salvation at Stake: Christian Martyrdom in Early Modern Europe. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1999.
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Cross-confessional analysis of attitudes toward, descriptions of, and acceptance of martyrdom during the Reformations. Describes martyrdom as fundamental to early modern understandings of Christianity and argues against interpretations that stress martyrdom’s function rather than the convictions supporting it.
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Räisänen, Päivi. Ketzer im Dorf: Visitationsverfahren, Täuferbekämpfung und lokale Handlungsmuster im frühneuzeitlichen Württemberg. Constance, Germany: Universitätsverlag Konstanz, 2011.
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A study of village and gender dynamics that is remarkable because the main figure involved was an Anabaptist woman. Clear analysis of the ways individuals who authorities presumed to be radical lived successfully in village society.
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Wandel, Lee Palmer. Voracious Idols and Violent Hands: Iconoclasm in Reformation Zurich, Strasbourg, and Basel. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1995.
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Comparative study of iconoclasm in three towns with three different interpretations of Protestant reform. Valuable for its focus on the experiences and interpretations of ordinary laity.
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Wunderli, Richard M. Peasant Fires: The Drummer of Niklashausen. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1992.
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The best English-language study of pre-Reformation piety and religious violence at the local and regional levels against which the attitudes and activities of the 16th and 17th centuries should be interpreted. Although by no means a perfect book, it is a valuable teaching resource because of its experiments with standard narrative practice.
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The German Peasants’ War and the Kingdom of Münster

Although many episodes of religious warfare and violence occurred in early modern Europe, the German Peasants’ War and the short-lived kingdom of Münster have been the most comprehensively studied with respect to lay piety. The classic statement of the social significance of the Peasants’ War is Blickle 1981. Although the author’s Marxist perspective leads him to concentrate on only a few of the rebels’ religious motivations, activities demonstrating lay piety and the rebel clergy’s influence are interpreted throughout the book. These actions and attitudes are developed as part of Anabaptist perceptions of the godly community in Stayer 1991. Scott and Scribner 1991 provides the best single-volume English edition of documents relating to the Peasants’ War, allowing readers to learn about the rebels’ and their opponents’ motivations and actions firsthand. Occurring less than a decade after the Peasants’ War, the conquest of the episcopal city of Münster by radical followers of Jan of Leiden sent shockwaves throughout the Holy Roman Empire, as did their violent repression. Haude 2000 is the most recent comprehensive survey of Münster’s effects on policies about and practices for controlling lay piety. Kerssenbroch 2007 provides an eyewitness account of the events in Münster, one remarkable for its analytical and descriptive depth and for the authorities’ disapproval of its conclusions.

Blickle, Peter. The Revolution of 1525: The German Peasants’ War from a New Perspective. Translated by Thomas A. Brady Jr. and H. C. Erik Midelfort. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1981.
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Classic reinterpretation of one of the most violent uprisings in pre-modern German history. Argues that the war should be seen as a “revolt of the common man” who challenged the social and economic claims of Germany’s nobility and understood some aspects of the early Reformation more thoroughly than they did.
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Haude, Sigrun. In the Shadow of “Savage Wolves”: Anabaptist Münster and the German Reformation during the 1530s. Boston: Humanities Press, 2000.
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Analysis of one of the most notorious radical episodes of the German Reformation. Although the focus is on how political and religious authorities of diverse confessions understood the events at Münster, their interpretations affected policy toward unorthodox aspects of lay piety throughout Germany in the 16th and 17th centuries.
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Kerssenbroch, Hermann von. Narrative of the Anabaptist Madness: The Overthrow of Münster, the Famous Metropolis of Westphalia. 2 vols. Translation, introduction, and notes by Christopher S. Mackay. Leiden, The Netherlands: Brill, 2007.
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Translation, with supporting documents, of one of the most detailed sources about events at Münster and reactions to it. Kerssenbroch was an eyewitness and, as a Catholic, he opposed the Anabaptist kingdom, but he also did not find the Catholic authorities blameless.
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Scott, Tom, and Robert W. Scribner, eds. The German Peasants’ War: A History in Documents. Atlantic Highlands, NJ: Humanities Press, 1991.
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Detailed and wide-ranging collection of documents, in many cases translated into English for the first time, covering all aspects of the German Peasants’ War. The introduction provides a detailed summary of the causes, progress, and consequences of the war and contains clear and valuable maps.
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Stayer, James M. The German Peasant’s War and Anabaptist Community of Goods. Montreal: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 1991.
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As an essay collection, it can be somewhat disjointed, but it well describes the ways those who opposed and sympathized with Anabaptism and the peasants saw these movements as united. Emphasizes the “community of goods” in both social policy and lay piety.
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Religious Minorities

Although Renaissance and Reformation Europe was predominantly Christian and this entry has focused on Christian experiences, Jewish and Muslim communities were scattered throughout Europe, especially in Iberia. In areas where such minorities existed, their very presence influenced Christian piety. The books by R. Po-chia Hsia (Hsia 1988 and Hsia 1992) describe common Christian prejudices against Jews, the negligible effects of the Reformations on such beliefs, and one of the more vicious and notorious persecutions in the 15th century. Gow 1995 provides further details about Christian anti-Semitism and the construction of an imaginary Jewish threat in light of the powerful apocalyptic element in Christian piety. Despite such anti-Semitism, however, Jews continued to live and interact with Christians. Borrowing from recent literature on religious tolerance, Debra Kaplan explains how this process worked in an important commercial and intellectual center (Kaplan 2011). Bell and Burnett 2006 describes many aspects of Jewish life and interaction with Christians in the Holy Roman Empire as a whole. Within 16th-century Iberia, Muslims faced similar mistrust and threats of violence, and Perry 2005 analyzes the effect of Christian religious policy on Muslim family life and describes how Muslim women and families perpetuated their distinctive practices and piety and how time, familial priorities, and religious policies led to the transformation of Iberian Muslim culture.

Bell, Dean Phillip, and Stephen G. Burnett, eds. Jews, Judaism, and the Reformation in Sixteenth-Century Germany. Leiden, The Netherlands: Brill, 2006.
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Extremely thorough and authoritative collection of the latest research on Jewish communities, faith, and relations with non-Jews. While some articles are more innovative than others, the combination of standard and unusual topics makes the book a true synthesis.
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Gow, Andrew Colin. The Red Jews: Antisemitism in an Apocalyptic Age, 1200–1600. Leiden, The Netherlands: Brill, 1995.
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Analyzes the legends surrounding the “red Jews,” a mythical Jewish community perceived as an imminent threat to Christians. Links these stories to the apocalyptic movements among late medieval clergy and laity and explores their influence on the treatment of Jews in German communities.
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Hsia, R. Po-chia. The Myth of Ritual Murder: Jews and Magic in Reformation Germany. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1988.
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Describes one of the most frequent accusations against Jews in early modern Germany: they needed Christian blood (most frequently that of unbaptized babies) for religious rites. Assesses how the Reformations affected both lay and clerical interpretations of child sacrifice, blood piety, and the Jews in their midst.
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Hsia, R. Po-chia. Trent 1475: Stories of a Ritual Murder Trial. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1992.
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Microhistorical treatment of one of the most notorious ritual murder trials of late medieval Europe. Complements Hsia 1988.
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Kaplan, Debra. Beyond Expulsion: Jews, Christians, and Reformation Strasbourg. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2011.
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Explores the ways in which rural Jews continued to interact with urban Christians even after Jews had been expelled from the city. The repression of such connections became an important aspect of Lutheran discipline during the Reformation, yet interaction continued, illustrating the give-and-take between pragmatic and doctrinal concerns.
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Perry, Mary Elizabeth. The Handless Maiden: Moriscos and the Politics of Religion in Early Modern Spain. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2005.
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Detailed archival study of Morisco life in a time and place in which Muslim society was under extreme pressure. Valuable focus on women and the household; dramatic example of cultural preservation in a repressive society.
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Religious Space, Time, and Environment

Recent sociological and psychological studies of time’s constructed nature have led to assessments of changes in time-keeping and perception during cultural stress. The Protestant Reformation made such modifications even more dramatic because traditional systems for keeping time were based on the Christian ritual year and reformers discarded or revised those rituals. Hutton 1994 is the earliest modern interpretation of how time and its rituals changed in a coherent, national study, while Koslofsky 2011 considers a broader unit of time and perception, namely night, also on a national scale. The Reformation’s reforms also dramatically altered the built environment, and the articles in Coster and Spicer 2005 assess the extent to which religious reform affected Christian space and religious experience. Walsham 2011 develops these themes for early modern England as a whole and brings the discussion beyond the built environment to consider the revised sacrality of landscapes and nature itself.

Coster, Will, and Andrew Spicer, eds. Sacred Space in Early Modern Europe. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2005.
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Argues that the Reformation did not disenchant the world but attempted to redefine the relationship of humans to their spiritual environment. The success with which it did so is more debatable. Precise microhistorical studies present many sides of this question in vivid detail.
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Hutton, Ronald. The Rise and Fall of Merry England, the Ritual Year, 1400–1700. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1994.
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Comprehensive analysis of the changes to the perception and keeping of time inspired by the Reformation and their effects on communal life. Although his explanations of the causes are somewhat basic, the detailed descriptions of chronology and rituals are unsurpassed.
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Koslofsky, Craig. Evening’s Empire: A History of the Night in Early Modern Europe. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2011.
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With a focus on Germany, this book explores the cultural significance of nighttime as both fraught and fascinating. Beginning with the most obvious perception of night as threatening, it also explores the ways night could be comforting, evocative, and titillating. Integrates lay piety with clerical perceptions, court life, and technological innovations, such as streetlights.
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Walsham, Alexandra. The Reformation of the Landscape: Religion, Identity, and Memory in Early Modern Britain and Ireland. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011.
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Detailed study of the effects of iconoclasm, the Dissolution of the Monasteries, the violence of the English Civil War, and early romantic and restoration movements had on the perception of and value ascribed to sacred space and the environment more generally.
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Saints and Angels

Saints were essential intercessors and vivid examples in late medieval piety, and most communities or individuals fell under the protection of at least one patron saint. The place of sainthood in late medieval theology and piety is thoroughly described in Vauchez 1997 using a wide variety of sources, especially hagiographies, that is, texts that portrayed saints’ actions and attitudes while both alive and dead as prefiguring their sanctity and testifying to God’s glory and Christianity’s truth. Frazier 2005, an analysis of the lives of later Renaissance saints, discusses the social and cultural embeddedness of such texts, while Heal 2007 focuses on the most significant saint in pre-Reformation Christianity: the Virgin Mary, mother of Christ. Yet, saints were not humanity’s sole intercessors before the Reformation. After the Reformation, angels would assume special prominence when, among Protestants, they filled many of the roles assigned to medieval saints. In this environment, angels protected and comforted humanity, and Marshall and Walsham 2006 portrays their varied roles across many confessions.

Frazier, Alison Knowles. Possible Lives: Authors and Saints in Renaissance Italy. New York: Columbia University Press, 2005.
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Describes the construction of hagiography in early modern Italy, particularly that by and about women. Focuses on hagiographical revision in light of contemporary religious concerns and the transition, in some cases, from manuscripts to printed texts.
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Heal, Bridget. The Cult of the Virgin Mary in Early Modern Germany: Protestant and Catholic Piety, 1500–1648. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2007.
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Although Protestant theologians revised their presentation of Mary into the ultimate mother rather than an active intercessor, her traditional role retained much of its influence among Protestants and, if anything, was enhanced among Catholics. Clear example of lay and non-elite influence on piety.
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Marshall, Peter, and Alexandra Walsham, eds. Angels in the Early Modern World. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2006.
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Detailed and well-illustrated exploration of the influence and reinterpretation of angels in early modern Catholicism and Protestantism. The introduction provides an exemplary survey of the importance of angels within early modern culture and spirituality, while the chapters consider more detailed aspects of piety involving angels.
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Vauchez, André. Sainthood in the Later Middle Ages. Translated by Jean Birrell. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1997.
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Comprehensive study of all aspects of sainthood in later medieval Europe. The standard reference and a compelling argument for the centrality of saints to late medieval piety.
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Spreading Belief

The ways religious messages were disseminated and interpreted has been a central question for decades, and several theses were proposed in the late 1970s that greatly influenced scholars. Eisenstein 1979, a description of the Protestant Reformation’s debt to the printing press, and Strauss 1978, a presentation of a Protestant Reformation that failed in the villages and among the illiterate, inspired veritable scholarly industries incorporating theology, psychology, reception theory, and the histories of education and technology. Ginzburg 1980 and Scribner 1981 carried questions of dissemination to cheap(er) print and broadened the discussion to questions of cultural resistance. Pettegree 2005 revisits many of these earlier debates, cogently summarizes the state of the field, and assesses the difficulties facing those trying to spread Reformation ideas and the scholars analyzing dissemination. In the process, the author expands the number and types of “texts” influencing lay piety far beyond the printed ones traditionally used.

Eisenstein, Elizabeth L. The Printing Press as an Agent of Change: Communications and Cultural Transformations in Early Modern Europe. 2 vols. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1979.
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Classic study of the effect of technological development on society; argues that the printing press enabled the Reformation’s success. Inspired generations of scholars to study the dissemination of religious reform. Eisenstein’s argument is summarized in Elizabeth L. Eisenstein, The Printing Revolution in Early Modern Europe (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1983).
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Ginzburg, Carlos. The Cheese and the Worms: The Cosmos of a Sixteenth-Century Miller. Translated by John Tedeschi and Anne Tedeschi. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1980.
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Analyzes the dissemination and interpretation of religious ideas through the trial of an Italian miller named Menocchio for heresy. Although the binary distinction between elite and popular culture on which parts of this analysis rest has been revised, this book has provided an entertaining and influential model for the study of popular culture and lay piety for more than thirty years.
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Pettegree, Andrew. Reformation and the Culture of Persuasion. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2005.
DOI: 10.1017/CBO9780511614613Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
Recent survey of the many methods Catholics, Protestants, and Dissenters used to communicate Reformation messages. Reduces but does not discount the role of printing and brings in other influential media, such as music, sermons, and art.
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Scribner, Robert W. For the Sake of Simple Folk: Popular Propaganda for the German Reformation. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1981.
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Pioneering study of pamphlet literature and broadsheets in the early Reformation. Focused on the ways such literature was used, intentionally and unintentionally, to spread the reformers’ messages and the diverse levels at which such texts could be read.
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Strauss, Gerald. Luther’s House of Learning: Indoctrination of the Young in the German Reformation. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1978.
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Using the reports of parish inspectors (called “visitation reports”), Strauss supports the complaint made by early reformers that villagers did not understand or “obstinately” resisted Protestantism. Inspired debates about the “success and failure” of the German Reformation.
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Printed Texts

Books, broadsheets, and pamphlets played a central role in spreading religious ideas, both orthodox and heretical, and have been widely studied. Scribner 1981 and Eisenstein 1979 (both cited under Spreading Belief) focus on Protestant texts and set the tone for most debates. Soergel 1993 applies Scribner’s models to a later time and Catholic sources, while Friedman 1993 concentrates on a specific topic in popular print. Russell 2002 compares both male and female pamphleteers working in the same region, while Cambers 2011 analyzes the culture of reading among England’s Puritans, a denomination frequently associated with individual and group reading. Considering textbooks about appropriate religious belief and practices (catechisms), Green 1996 assesses the evolution and effectiveness of religious training.

Cambers, Andrew. Godly Reading: Print, Manuscript, and Puritanism in England, 1580–1720. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2011.
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Analyzes the culture of reading in the Protestant community most frequently linked to it: the Puritans. Organized around sites of reading, this book demonstrates the diverse spaces and circumstances that could inspire religious meditations. Valuable model for other regions and religions.
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Friedman, Jerome. Battle of the Frogs and Fairford’s Flies: Miracles and the Pulp Press during the English Revolution. New York: St. Martin’s, 1993.
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Vividly written study of England’s “popular press” and its contribution to lay piety and theology during an era in English history when much of the population was searching for supernatural explanations. Comparisons between the early modern newsbooks and modern tabloids are less convincing.
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Green, Ian M. The Christian’s ABC: Catechisms and Catechizing in England, c.1530–1740. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1996.
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Comprehensive survey of the texts and techniques used to disseminate religious knowledge in early modern England. Particularly interesting when discussing catechism during times of social and political crisis, such as the 1550s, the English Civil War, and the Glorious Revolution.
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Russell, Paul A. Lay Theology in the Reformation: Popular Pamphleteers in Southwest Germany, 1521–1525. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2002.
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Challenges the extent to which the clergy controlled Reformation messages through an analysis of male and female pamphleteers in three German urban centers. Good example of anticlericalism and an archetypically wise “common man.”
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Soergel, Philip M. Wondrous in His Saints: Counter-Reformation Propaganda in Bavaria. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1993.
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Challenging the common interpretation that Catholics polemicists did not know how to communicate their ideas, Soergel describes the texts, techniques, and interpretations Catholic authorities used to disseminate their faith. Building on the model provided in Scribner 1981 (cited under Spreading Belief), the author expands the chronological and geographical scope of such studies.
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Music and Art

Both artistic objects and music provided influential means for reformers and traditionalists to communicate religious messages and to express both individual and communal piety. Analyzing the ways in which such media were interpreted remains contentious. Two recent works attempt to grapple with this question on a large scale. Kamerick 2002 focuses on the pre-Reformation experience in northern Europe, while Cornelison and Montgomery 2006 concentrates on the Italian experience. Raguin 2010 is a collection of persuasive articles assessing the impact of the Reformations on the reception and value of religious objects. Music’s influence has proven more elusive, but several recent monographs have concentrated on the laity’s experience of music, especially outside the ecclesiastical setting, and the ways in which they expressed and formed lay piety. Written by a Reformation musicologist and theologian, respectively, Oettinger 2001 and Brown 2005 analyze the subversive effects of music and the ways musical compositions could be reinvented to spread reformers’ messages among the clergy and laity.

Brown, Christopher. Singing the Gospel: Lutheran Hymns and the Success of the Reformation. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2005.
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Analyzes the ways in which music was integrated into Lutheran religious experience and society, effectively bridging any divide between the two.
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Cornelison, Sally J., and Scott B. Montgomery, eds. Images, Relics, and Devotional Practices in Medieval and Renaissance Italy. Tempe: Arizona Center for Medieval and Renaissance Studies, 2006.
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Precise studies of the ways in which particular art works or programs were developed, displayed, and interpreted. Integrates such works into local contexts and broader themes in lay devotion.
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Kamerick, Kathleen. Popular Piety and Art in the Late Middle Ages: Image Worship and Idolatry in England, 1350–1500. New York: Palgrave, 2002.
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Survey of the ways the laity interpreted artistic objects and the spirituality they inspired. Although it deals with English experience, its conclusions are valuable for other nations.
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Oettinger, Rebecca Wagner. Music as Propaganda in the German Reformation. Aldershot, UK: Ashgate, 2001.
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It does for music what Scribner 1981 (cited under Spreading Belief) did for broadsheets in the early Reformation. Particularly good at portraying the embeddedness of music in daily life and the ways that music could be subversive without putting its performers in danger.
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Raguin, Virginia Chieffo, ed. Art, Piety and Destruction in the Christian West, 1500–1700. Farnham, UK: Ashgate, 2010.
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Combines artistic, historical, and anthropological analysis of key themes and representative objects. Provides precise and thoughtful analysis of the role of art in early modern piety and the significance of its destruction.
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Preaching

In a primarily illiterate or marginally literate population, sermons were a common means of teaching orthodox religion prior to the Reformation, and their status was further enhanced among Protestants and Dissenters. Taylor 1992 is one of the most influential studies of the culture surrounding preaching in the 15th and 16th centuries, and the articles in Taylor 2001 expand its insights into a broader geographic framework. Frymire 2010 provides a comprehensive analysis of sermon collections that preachers from all confessions widely used as models for or in place of their own; in the process, the author shows how easy it was for traditional perspectives and piety to be perpetuated. Focusing on literary and linguistic theories of reception, Hunt 2010 considers how people might have heard and retained sermons.

Frymire, John M. The Primacy of the Postils: Catholics, Protestants, and the Dissemination of Ideas in Early Modern Germany. Leiden, The Netherlands: Brill, 2010.
DOI: 10.1163/ej.9789004180369.i-650Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
Model study of the development of sermons in response to Protestant and Catholic reform movements, especially those sermons based around the annual cycle of scriptural readings and commentaries. It describes what the laity was told and how those messages changed depending on context and confession.
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Hunt, Arnold. The Art of Hearing: English Preachers and Their Audiences, 1590–1640. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2010.
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One of the most vexed questions for scholars of sermons is how audiences actually understood sermons. This is the most recent attempt to answer that question through analysis of the interactions between audience and preacher and the ways print versus oral reception affected the message.
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Taylor, Larissa. Soldiers of Christ: Preaching in Late Medieval and Reformation France. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1992.
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Pioneering study covering many aspects of sermon development, presentation, and reception. Considers important themes in late medieval piety and the Reformations, such as forming a Christian life, guiding women’s behavior, and finding salvation. Devotes a third of the book to what it meant to preach heresy, how heresy was preached, and how heresy was opposed from the pulpit.
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Taylor, Larissa, ed. Preachers and People in the Reformations and Early Modern Europe. Leiden, The Netherlands: Brill, 2001.
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Broad chronologically and geographically, this collection provides detailed case studies of preaching practices and suggests the effects of an individual’s faith on sermon reception.
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Religious Theater

Religious theater was a popular part of festivals and memorably portrayed key episodes in the Old and New Testaments with striking props, such as explosions, fires, and floods. The York mystery plays were among the most famous, and Beadle and King 1984 provides a modern English edition. Gibson 1989 surveys the context of the popular regional play cycles, and Stevenson 2010 interprets piety in the York plays using influential psychological and educational theories. Historical studies of post-Reformation religious plays and piety are few, but Waite 2000 provides an insightful analysis informed by a solid presentation of their theological, social, and cultural context.

Beadle, Richard, and Pamela M. King, eds. York Mystery Plays: A Selection in Modern Spelling. Oxford: Clarendon, 1984.
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Clear and diverse collection of the plays organized by the guild responsible for them. Shows how the plays dramatized key moments in the Old and New Testaments and provides a basic description of the staging.
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Gibson, Gail McMurray. The Theater of Devotion: East Anglian Drama and Society in the Late Middle Ages. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1989.
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Plays with several definitions of drama—theatrical, emotional, and affective—to situate theater within regional culture, both lay and clerical. Effective descriptions of the many factors influencing belief, piety, and their theatrical depictions.
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Stevenson, Jill. Performance, Cognitive Theory, and Devotional Culture: Sensual Piety in Late Medieval York. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2010.
DOI: 10.1057/9780230109070Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
Provides an analysis based on cognitive theory to appreciate the effect of late medieval mystery plays on lay piety. The role of vision, physicality, space, and material objects in both performance and piety are integrated and interpreted.
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Waite, Gary K. Reformers on Stage: Popular Drama and Religious Propaganda in the Low Countries of Charles V, 1515–1556. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2000.
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Analysis of the scripts of early modern chambers of rhetoric, amateur drama, and literary clubs, many members of which were artisans and merchants, to assess the integration of religious themes into scripts and the contribution they made to debates over religious reform.