The primacy of the postils : Catholics, Protestants, and the dissemination of ideas in early modern Germany / / by John M. Frymire.

• Superior document: Studies in medieval and Reformation traditions, v. 147
• Author: Frymire, John M.
• Year of Publication: 2010
• Language: English
• Series: Studies in medieval and Reformation traditions ; v. 147.
• Physical Description: 1 online resource (664 p.)
• Notes: Description based upon print version of record.

Scholarship on the German Reformation has long equated preaching with Protestantism, just as many scholars have employed sermons but usually in supplemental and unsystematic ways. Based on an analysis of over 400 standard sermon collections (postils) produced by Catholics, Lutherans, and Calvinists (1520-1620), this study offers the first comprehensive, systematic presentation of these works from a cross-confessional perspective. It lays to rest the notion that preaching was somehow distinctively Protestant while tracing the creation, production, use, and censorship of postils. These sermon collections were nothing less than the applied distillation of Christianity delivered on a regular basis by the clergy to the laity, and as such the most important vehicle for the dissemination of ideas in early modern Germany.

Table of Contents

Catholic preaching and the German Reformation? : postils and their production, 1520-1535 -- Re-invention, innovation, and reaction : Lutheran and Catholic postils, 1535-1555 -- Matches made in heaven : Lutheran postillators in the service of their princes, 1555-1620 -- Excursus : Calvinist postils? : the pragmatism of German Reformed postillators -- Catholic Postillenfresser : postils, Catholic reform, and the Counter-Reformation -- Correcting Catholicism : censorship, confessional consolidation, and the decline of homegrown postillators.