Paper 2303
This paper will be available every year.
Early Modern Christianity 1500-1648
Syllabus
Description
The paper requires an understanding of the late medieval church, the work and thought of the leading reformers, particularly Luther, Zwingli, and Calvin, together with the radicals, and the impact of the Reformation on European society. Questions will also be set on renewal in the Roman Catholic Church, and on religious change in England from the Henrician reforms to the reign of Charles I and the civil wars in his kingdoms.
Two lecture series spanning two terms are core to this paper: The Reformation in Europe and
The English Reformation.
Aims
To gain an integrated view of the historical and doctrinal developments which led to the break-up of the Western Latin Church and which still shape the contours of Western Christianity. To sample the full range of the period which extended from the last decades of the undivided Western Church through to the European-wide wars of the early seventeenth century, and to appreciate the extent to which they were related to religious conflict.
Objectives
(a) Students should show an understanding of why the Western Latin Church proved vulnerable to calls for reform. They should be familiar with the work and thought of the leading magisterial Protestant reformers, and have a sense of what constituted radical theological alternatives.
(b) Students will have been introduced to the developments of the Reformation in European society, together with the renewal which took place in the Roman Catholic Church.
(c) Students will have gained a sense of the slow and untidy growth of confessional identities up to the end of the Thirty Years' War (1648). They will have an opportunity to trace the process by which confessional tensions interacted with power politics to produce this most destructive of Europe’s wars of religion.
(d) Students will have been introduced to the course of religious change in England from the reforms and legislative acts of Henry VIII up to the downfall of Charles I, and to see how the conflicts which (at least temporarily) destroyed the monarchy in the Stuarts’ three kingdoms were triggered by intra-Protestant quarrels and by Protestant fear of militant Roman Catholicism. They may choose to study this in greater or lesser depth, in balance with the wider European picture.
Delivery
16 lectures; 8 tutorials
Assessment
One three-hour written examination in TT of the second year of the Honour School.Candidates will be required to answer three essay questions.
Reading list