Sacred History
Subtitle: uses of the Christian past in the Renaissance world
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Published: 2012
Place of publication: Oxford, UK
Language: eng
Format: Hardcover
Number of pages: 339
ISBN-13: 9780199594795
Description: "This volume provides the first geographically broad, comparative survey of early modern 'sacred history', or writing on the history of the Christian Church, its leaders and saints, and its institutional and doctrinal developments, in the two centuries from c. 1450-1650. With deep medieval roots, ecclesiastical history was generally a conservative enterprise, often serving to reinforce confessional, national, regional, dynastic, or local identities. But writers of sacred history innovated in research methods and in techniques of scholarly production, especially after the advent of print. The demand for sacred history was particularly acute in the various movements for religious reform, in both Catholic and Protestant traditions. After the Renaissance, many writers sought to apply humanist critical principles to writing about the church, but the sceptical thrust of humanist historiography threatened to undermine many ecclesiastical traditions, and religious historians often had to wrestle with tensions between criticism and piety.

Thirteen thematic chapters examine the influence of Renaissance humanism, religious reform, and other political, intellectual, and social developments of these two centuries on the writing of ecclesiastical history in its various forms. These diverse genres, inherited from medieval culture, included saints' lives, diocesan histories, national chronicles, and travel accounts. Early chapters examine Catholic and Protestant traditions of sacred historiography in western Europe, especially Italy and Switzerland. Subsequent chapters examine particular instances of sacred historiography in Germany, central Europe, Spain, England, Ireland, France, and Portuguese India; and developments in Christian art historiography and Holy Land antiquarianism"--
Table of contents: title: Part one : Church history in the Renaissance and Reformation.; title: Church history in early modern Europe : tradition and innovation / Anthony Grafton; title: Primitivism, patristics, and polemic in Protestant visions of early Christianity / Euan Cameron; title: Cesare Baronio and the Roman Catholic vision of the early church / Giuseppe Antonio Guazzelli; title: What was sacred history? (mostly Roman) Catholic uses of the Christian past after Trent / Simon Ditchfield; title: Part two : National history and sacred history.; title: The Germania illustrata, humanist history, and the christianization of Germany / David J. Collins, S.J.; title: Renaissance chroniclers and the Apostolic origins of Spanish Christianity / Katherine Elliot Van Liere; title: Imagining Christian origins : Catholic visions of a holy past in central Europe / Howard P. Louthan; title: Elizabethan histories of English Christian origins / Rosamund Oates; title: Reconstructing Irish Catholic history after the Reformation / Salvador Ryan; title: Part three : Uses of sacred history in the early modern Catholic world.; title: The lives of the Saints in the French Renaissance c.1500-c.1650 / Jean-Marie Le Gall; title: Doubting Thomas : the apostle and the Portuguese empire in early modern Asia / Liam Matthew Brockey; title: Cultural history in the catacombs : early Christian art and Macarius's Hagioglypta / Irina Orgyshkevich; title: Scholarly pilgrims : antiquarian visions of the Holy Land / Adam G. Beaver