A central tenet of Reformed theology was the doctrine of justification by imputed righteousness: the faithful are not saved on account of their own righteousness, but purely by the gracious decision of God to ‘impute’ or ‘account’ the perfect righteousness of his Son unto them. While this doctrine was a popular target for broader anti-Calvinist criticism, this chapter demonstrates that Whichcote, Cudworth, More and Smith challenged the Reformed doctrine by producing an explicitly Platonic account of justification on which believers are rendered acceptable to God by deification (i.e. by direct, internal conformity to and participation in the nature of God). This model of justification is distinctive, even against the wider background of English anti-Calvinism, and provides one of the strongest indications of the close philosophical alignment of Whichcote, More, Cudworth and Smith. As the present chapter will demonstrate, to their Calvinist critics such as Anthony Tuckney, it was the Cambridge Platonists’ views about justification that constituted their most egregious departure from Reformed doctrine and that most clearly unmasked the ‘Platonic’ character of their thought.

The Reformed theology that dominated Cambridge in the mid seventeenth century tended strongly towards a voluntarist conception of God’s relation to morality, on which God’s will is the sole determiner of moral truths. This chapter demonstrates that over the same short period (c. 1642–51), the Cambridge Platonists all took a controversial stand against the voluntarism of their Calvinist colleagues, arguing for a kind of moral realism on which God’s goodness precedes, and in a sense even constrains his will. They did this despite the fact that their realist position was routinely denied and condemned in Reformed preaching about predestination. Whichcote, More, Cudworth and Smith’s arguments against voluntarism and in favour of realism in this narrow time period suggest close intellectual contact while also matching Tuckney’s description of the doctrinal profile of Whichcote’s ‘learned and ingenious’ Plato-loving scholars.

Saxony, home of Martin Luther, was the first country to be divided over the issue of the Protestant faith. While Ernestine Saxony became the heartland of the Reformation, the neighbouring principality of Albertine Saxony saw the beginnings of the Counter-Reformation. The two Saxonies provide almost perfect laboratory conditions for comparing contrary reactions to the Reformation. By investigating the lives, piety and politics of the Wettin princes, Frederick the Wise, John the Constant and George of Saxony the Reformation is revealed to have been a true game changer. Christian humanism, attempts at church reform and sympathy for the Reformation did not correlate neatly. Rather, the dynamics of religious conversion disrupted lines of continuity from the Middle Ages into the early modern era. That disruption testifies to the groundbreaking impact of Protestant ideas. At the same time, early resistance to Luther in Electoral Saxony proves that even in his homeland, Reformation and Catholic reform were alternatives right from the very beginning.

Despite being inundated with publications on the subject historians today feel less confident than ever that they truly understand the Reformation. The prevalence of national paradigms, such as ‘confessionalisation’ in German Reformation studies and ‘revisionism’ in English Reformation studies, encourages scholars to focus their attention on local circumstances and on specific individuals in those localities without due attention to the bigger picture. The sheer volume of case-studies being generated risks the loss of an overall perspective, and threatens to obscure the magnitude and significance of the Reformation as a European phenomenon of the first order. It is critically important to appreciate the continental scale of the Reformation because it reflected the scale and severity of the crisis of authority that beset the Catholic Church during the half-century or so following Fr Martin Luther’s announcement of the sola scriptura principle. That crisis cannot be explained by reference to local circumstances only. It went to the very heart of the institution, and it posed an existential threat to the Catholic Church. Reformation historians have yet to explain convincingly why Luther’s challenge resonated with such devastating effects across the continent. This collection of essays reflects the impact of the Reformation across Europe and offers explanations of its impact.

German practice in the sixteenth century was catching up with the more centralised systems that had existed in France and Italy since the fourteenth century - punishment was in theory severe but in practice the system was governed by the ubiquity of pardons and out-of-court settlements. The significance of the reforms was to give the state greater purview over private settlements. Sovereign authority was enhanced by the exercise of grace through pardons and remissions. But there were some peculiar features about the peace in the feud in Germany. This chapter sets out the traditional practices of Sühne, its interaction with the law and the church, and some reasons for its decline in the seventeenth century. Like other northern Europeans, Germans did not develop the sophisticated ethico-political treatises that the problem of violence encouraged in Italy, and the domain was largely left to moralising sermons. But during this period, educated Germans were exposed to new stoic ideas about peace. German ego-documents are especially rich in their ruminations on quarrels and the ups and downs of litigation and peacemaking.

This concluding chapter describes the inevitability of ambiguity among everyone affected by the Reformation. It reviews historiographical trends of research since the 1970s in intellectual and social history. Comparing these trends to the benefits and shortcomings of the “confessionalization thesis,” it argues for reconsideration of the idea of third forces, adapting a concept suggested by the Austrian medievalist and public intellectual Friedrich Heer and the French Renaissance historian Thierry Wanegffelen. It finally explains how the power of third forces describes the specific hybridity of the Reformation.

Martin Luther’s infamous writings against the Jews are brought into focus, examining both their impact from the 16th through the 20th centuries and the different scholarly approaches toward interpreting them. Luther’s treatises are placed into the historical context in which they were written, and the significance of the response to his writings by his Catholic, Protestant, and Jewish contemporaries is highlighted.

This chapter continues the exploration of the development of the doctrine of justification during the Middle Ages, focussing on the important concept of grace. Although medieval theologians based their thinking on this significant element of the Christian doctrine of justification on the writings of Augustine of Hippo, it became clear that the idea required further development to engage with the questions being explored at this time. The chapter opens by exploring the increasingly important correlation between grace and the concept of the supernatural, which is expressed in Aquinas’s famous definition of grace as ‘something supernatural within the soul’. The analysis then shifts to the distinction between actual and sanctifying grace. Although this distinction is implicit within Augustine’s theology of grace, it lacked the conceptual precision necessary to engage certain questions. This is also true concerning the distinction between operative and co-operative grace, which became increasingly important in Aquinas’s theological analysis. The chapter concludes by exploring one of the most distinctive themes in thirteenth-century theology: the role of supernatural habits of grace in justification. What factors led to its introduction, and why did Ockham and the via moderna criticise this? This analysis establishes a significant continuity of argument between the via moderna and Luther on the relational aspects of grace.

Chapter 13 assesses the changes in understanding of justification within Lutheranism between 1516 to 1580, noting in particular the growing influence of Melanchthon’s forensic understanding of justification on the shaping of the Wittenberg movement’s approach to ʻjustification by faith alone’. The chapter highlights some divergences in early Lutheranism, and tracks the growing convergence within the movement around a forensic doctrine of justification through an imputed righteousness, reflecting the increasing theological authority of Melanchthon during this period. Justification was now identified as the divine act of acceptance of an individual as righteous, followed by the process of sanctification, through which that individual became righteous. After considering the theology of justification set out in the Augsburg Confession and its apology, the chapter concludes by focussing on the consolidation of a distinctively Lutheran approach in the Formula of Concord, noting how this aimed to resolve some significant debates within Lutheranism around this time.

Chapter 12 considers the critically important question of the origins and development of Martin Luther’s distinctive and highly influential views on justification ‘by faith alone (sola fide)’. The chapter presents an analysis of Luther’s reflections on the nature of justification and the question of the meaning of the Pauline term ‘righteousness of God’, identifying the turning points in Luther’s thinking on justification, and its implications for the nascent Protestant movement. It is emphasised that Luther’s changing views on justification were developed in interaction with biblical texts, particularly Paul’s letter to the Romans. Luther initially saw justification as a transformative process, and adopted a generally Augustinian understanding of its dynamics – as seen, for example, in his illustration of a patient being cared for by a physician, who is gradually being restored to health. Luther came to the view that the medieval church had lost sight of the graciousness of justification, and gave an increasingly significant place to the doctrine of justification by faith in his theology – a process which is completed in his assertion that the doctrine was the ‘article by which the church stands or falls’.

The third part of this book deals with the emergence of Protestantism, and the various approaches to the question of justification that emerged within the various evangelical movements in the first three decades of the sixteenth century. Chapter 11 deals with the important question of whether there can be said to be a single or coherent ‘Reformation’ doctrine of justification. The chapter surveys the evidence, which suggests that a number of approaches to justification emerged within evangelical groups in early sixteenth-century Switzerland and Germany, with varying attitudes towards the perceived importance of the doctrine, and how it was to be framed. Initially, the concept of justification was not understood forensically, tending to be seen as primarily transformational. The chapter tracks the growing consensus across evangelical movements which led to consolidation of the view that justification by faith was of central importance, and that it was to be understood as a change in status rather than a change in nature. These points are addressed in greater detail in subsequent chapters.

The conclusion reflects more broadly on the significance of a gendered reading for understanding early modern political thought. It also offers a brief take on the Reformation, a topic most important for early modern politics and marriage. The focus on the Reformation is tied up with one of the most important reflections that this Conclusion offers, namely an engagement with the idea of patriarchal political thought. Earlier scholarship has assumed that ‘patriarchalism’ was the dominant take on the family in early modern political thought. This book however has offered a comprehensive re-examination of this trope and has shown that more important to Renaissance political thought than the father–king analogy was the wife–citizen connection. The Conclusion gives some explanation of the changes that the seventeenth century saw and in which, indeed, fathers became lords, and citizens degraded from a wife-like status to their early modern incarnation as child-like subjects.

In the Middle Ages and the sixteenth century, Jews and Jewish communities faced severe existential threats nearly everywhere in Western and Central Europe. The many types of persecution included banishment, forced conversion, confiscation of property, cancellation of debts, as well as assault and murder. Sometimes anti-Jewish violence erupted spontaneously, and sometimes it resulted from legally conducted prosecution of Jewish victims. During this long period, the number of territories that permitted Jewish residency contracted steadily until the second half of the sixteenth century, when more favorable conditions slowly began to develop in some areas of Europe. The wave of expulsions began with England in 1290, followed by France in 1394, and crested, but did not entirely dissipate, with the banishment of Sephardic Jews from Spain in 1492 and from Portugal in 1497. Significant Jewish communities in Sicily (1493) and the Kingdom of Naples (1511–1541) were also banished in the aftermath of the Spanish decree. The Sephardic expulsions as well as the preceding century of anti-Jewish agitation in Spain (beginning with widespread pogroms in 1391) resulted in tens of thousands of coercive baptisms and, subsequently, the development of a large Converso population. As many Conversos continued to practice Judaism surreptitiously, they became the targets of the Spanish and, later, Portuguese inquisitions (established in 1478 and 1536, respectively). Moreover, the Iberian expulsions dispersed the thriving Sephardic communities to the Ottoman Empire, parts of Italy, and, as of circa 1600, to the northern port cities of Amsterdam and Hamburg, as well as, beginning in the 1650s, to London. These port cities became important venues for the foundation of new, highly influential Jewish communities.

In no other period in the German-speaking lands was so much written about, and in the service of, religion as from 1450 to 1700. The chapter is divided into four sections. The first discusses the literature of exhortation and polemic. Before the Reformation this included The Ship of Fools (1494) by Sebastian Brant and the writings of Erasmus. From 1517 on it meant the religious debate spearheaded by Martin Luther. The second section demonstrates how drama was used for polemical and edificatory purposes in Reformation satire, Protestant Biblical drama, and both Catholic and Protestant historical drama. The third section analyses a cautionary tale from each side of the confessional divide: the Lutheran History of Dr John Faustus (1587) and the Catholic Grimmelshausen’s Simplicissimus (1669). The fourth section discusses the religious poetry of the seventeenth century, including that of Andreas Gryphius, the hymns of Paul Gerhardt and mystical poetry from Jakob Böhme to Catharina Regina von Greiffenberg.

During his lifetime, Brahms accumulated a sizeable fortune. Although the early days were not without difficulties, his finances then accumulated steadily and virtually uninterruptedly. When he died in 1897, he left behind not only manuscripts of his own works, but also an extensive collection of other composers’ autograph manuscripts (including of Mozart, Haydn, Beethoven, Schubert, Schumann, etc.) as well as bonds worth over 181,000 Gulden.The size of the sum is evident when one compares the rent that he paid his landlady Coelestine Truxa between 1887 and 1897 for his three-room apartment in Vienna’s Karlsgasse, which amounted half-yearly to 347 Gulden and 25 Kreuzer.

Brahms grew up in the Hamburg‘Gängeviertel’, an area of workers, small-scale artisans and tradesmen in modest circumstances [see Ch. 1 ‘Childhood in Hamburg’]. Later on, when he could determine his own lifestyle, luxury still held no appeal.

To define what Brahms thought of as ‘early music’ is not difficult. It was essentially the same view as that of his musical contemporaries, particularly those in the German-speaking world. For them, it ended with the works of Johann Sebastian Bach and Georg Friedrich Händel (since they thought of him as German); it began roughly in the era that we think of as the mid-Renaissance, in particular with composers who were important contributors to the development of church music. For Catholics, interest centred on the works of Palestrina and his contemporaries, extending to seventeenth-century composers in the religious tradition. For Lutherans,the history that began with Martin Luther and culminated in the works of Bach was a principal thread that included composers such as Heinrich Isaac, Ludwig Senfl, Johannes Eccard, Michael Praetorius and Heinrich Schütz.