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Studies in the Radical Reformation (1517–1618): A Bibliographical Survey of Research Since 1939

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 July 2009

George Huntson Williams
George Huntson Williams
Affiliation:
Harvard Divinity School
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Extract

Anabaptism was a religious movement of the little people of village and town, affecting in the end almost the whole area of the Germanic dialects from the Tyrol to Flanders, from Alsace to Prussia. Anabaptism, for all its, or perhaps precisely because of its, dissociation from principality and privilege, was more exclusively a Germanic movement than even Lutheranism; for the latter could at least go beyond the Germanic dialects to express itself in a Scandinavian or Slavic tongue; and, of course, Anabaptism was far less international than the Reformed movement. The linguistic containment of Anabaptism is all the more remarkable for the reason that in principle Anabaptism was much more world-minded and mission-minded—because of the seriousness with which it took the great commission— than any variety of the Magisterial Reformation. Yet when it moved beyond the deeply sinused speech frontier to the East, for example, it did so in ethnically and linguistically closed colonies in Moravia, Poland, and elsewhere. Documents from the pens of Anabaptists in French, a Scandinavian tongue, Polish, Czech, or Italian, surviving from the Reformation Era, could be held between two fingers; while the surviving Anabaptist writings in the international language of the Humanists and the Reformers are even fewer. (In contrast, a good deal of the surviving literary corpus of the Spiritualists like Schwenckfeld and especially of the Evangelical Rationalists is in Latin, as well as in the Romance and Slavic tongues and Hungarian.) The little people of Anabaptism were not without recruits and even leadership from former priests and monks with their Latin and an occasional patrician with his Humanist training, but the lingua franca of Anabaptism was German, although progressive modification in idiom was necessary as the radical evangelical gospel was proclaimed by preacher or epistle from North to South.

Type
Research Article
Information
Church History , Volume 27 , Issue 2 , June 1958 , pp. 124 - 160
Copyright
Copyright © American Society of Church History 1958

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References

33. See titles below under Missions.

34. See above at n. 10.

35. Although superseded in part by Krahn, 's, Dosker, 's survey, “Recent Sources of Information on the Anabaptists in the Netherlands,” ASCH, Papers, 2nd ser., V (1917), 49–71Google Scholar, is still useful with special reference to the structure and contents of the Bibliotheca Reforminatoa Neerlandica.

36. Het Gentsche Martyrologium (1530–1595), Rijksuniversiteit te Gent, Werken, No. 96 (Bruges, 1945)Google Scholar; Het Brugsche Martyrologium (12 10 1527–1527 08 1573) (Brussels, 1947)Google Scholar; Le Martyrologe courtraisiem (1536–1586) et le Martyrologe bruxellois (1523–1597), with a preface by Leon-E. Halkin (Vilvorde, 1950). The one for Antwerp with interpretation was prepared by Vos, Karel, “De Doopsgezinden te Antwerpen in de zestiende eeuw” Bulletin de la Commission Royale pour l' Histoire de Belgique (henceforth: BCRHB), LXXXIV (1920), 312 ff.Google Scholar

37. I have seen announced but have not examined his De Hervorming in de Zuidelijke Nederlanden in 16. eeuw (Brussels, 1949)Google Scholar. Jean Meyerhoffer, formerly of Belgium and now of the Free Faculty of Theology in Lausanne, has in preparation, Histoire du protestantisme en Belge, Collection Nationale, Brussels. See also his synoptic “Martyrs protestant du XVIe siècle,” RBPH, XXX (1952)Google Scholar. See also Halkin, L.-E., Protestantse Martelaars (1953).Google Scholar

38. Frédéricq, Paul, Corpus Documentorum inquisitionis Neerlandicae, IV (Ghent, 1900)Google Scholar contains numerous references to Sacramentarians beginning in 1517.

39. See above at n. 36.

40. It is of interest that the first “Protestant” martyr in Poland was also a woman.

41. Respectively in Parke, D., Epic of Unitarianism (Boston, 1957)Google Scholar and in the Hartford Theological Institution, Bulletin, 1955.

42. “Nederlandsch Vertalingen van S. F. 's Geschriften,” and “Nicolais Inlassching over de Franckisten,” NAKG, n. s., XVIII (1925).Google Scholar

43. Originally called the Pacific Unitarian Sehool for the Ministry and it is thus that Wilbur refers in his books to the location of unique and rare Unitariana.

44. Au earlier and still very useful, because succinct and lucid, account designed for Sunday school use is Our Unitarian Heritage (Boston, 1925).Google Scholar

45. A complete bibliography of his own works, most of them dealing with Unitarianism, is published in the Harvard Divinity School Bulletin (1955/1956), No. 21, pp. 161–174.Google Scholar

46. This bibliography virtually supersedes his “The Present State of Servetus Studies,” The Journal of Modern History, IV (1932), 72–92Google Scholar. But see his “Documenta Servetiana,” ARG, XLV (1954), 99–108.Google Scholar

47. Extensively reviewed and evaluated by Williams, G., The Unitarian Historical Society, Proceedings XI: 2 (1957), 29–35.Google Scholar

48. Les idées philosophiques de Bernadin Ochin de Sienne, Ėtudes de philosophic mediévale, VII.

49. “B. O. e la Riforma in Italia,” Atti dell'Accademia di Scienze morali e politiche della Societa Reale di Napoli, LVII. Another work of Nicolini was published at about the same time as Bainton's, study, It Pensiero di B. O. (Naples, 1939)Google Scholar; since then: “Girolamo Muzio e B. O.: Storia di una polemica cinquecentesca,” Biblion, I (1946), 9–45Google Scholar; “Annali ochiniani,” Atti dell' Accademia Pontaniana, n. s II, 87–100Google Scholar; VI, 1–19; “Sui rapporti di B. O. con Ie città di Bologna e di Lueca,” Ibid., 87–97; Il frate osservante Bonaventura, de Centi e il nunzio Fabio Mignanelli: Episodo di vita religiosa Veneziana del Cinquecento (Naples, 1957).Google Scholar

50. It was an extraordinary feature of the Reformation Era in Poland that the Old Believers were originally and legally included among the dissidentes de religione, before the term came to mean i. e., dissidents from [the true] religion (Catholicism).

51. An earlier work of his is “O genez aatytryuitaryzmu poiskiego,” RI, VI (1934), 78–90Google Scholar. Numerous other articles on Arianism in Poland appear in this periodical.

52. Tazbir, J.has more recently studied the Reformation and the problem of the peasants in sixteenth-century Poland (Breslau, 1953).Google Scholar

53. The anti-monastic praise of marriage in Erasmus might be a good starting point. See van Telle, Fmile, Erasme de Rotterdain et le septème sacrement: Ėtude d'Evangélisme matrimonial au XVIe siècle (Geneva, 1954).Google Scholar

54. The following items, listed according to the main subdivisions of the foregoing article, have appeared since its completion: III: Yoder, John H., “The Turning Point in the Zwinglian Reformation,” MQR, XXXII (1958), 128–140Google Scholar; Courvoisier, Jacques, “Du schisme dans la tradition et dana I 'histoire des Ėglises éformées,” L'Ėglise et les Églises, Études… offerts à Dom Lambert Beauduin, II, 283–307Google Scholar; IV: Bergsten, Torsten, “Pilgram Marbeck und seine Auseinandersetzung mit Caspar Schwenckfeld,” Kyrlcohistorisk Arskrift, 1957, 37–100Google Scholar; VI: Kupsch, Eduard, “Der Polnische Unitarismus,” Jahrbücoher für Geschkhte Osteuropas, V (1957), 401–440Google Scholar; Kowahka, Halina, “A Report of the scientific sessions concerning the ideology and the activity of the Polish Brethren,” Kwartalnik Historyczny, LXI 2 (1954), 360–365Google Scholar; VII: Hillerbrand, Hans J., “The Anabaptist View of the State,” MQR, XXXII (1958), 83–110Google Scholar; James Leo Garrett, “The Nature of the Church according to Radical Reformation,” Ibid., 111–127.