Beliefs And The Dead In Reformation England

Download Beliefs And The Dead In Reformation England full books in PDF, epub, and Kindle. Read online Beliefs And The Dead In Reformation England ebook anywhere anytime directly on your device. Fast Download speed and no annoying ads. We cannot guarantee that every ebooks is available!

Beliefs and the Dead in Reformation England

Author : Peter Marshall
Publisher : OUP Oxford
ISBN 13 : 0191542911
Total Pages : 362 pages
Book Rating : 4.1/5 (915 download)

DOWNLOAD NOW!

Book Synopsis Beliefs and the Dead in Reformation England by : Peter Marshall

Download or read book Beliefs and the Dead in Reformation England written by Peter Marshall and published by OUP Oxford. This book was released on 2002-07-11 with total page 362 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This is the first comprehensive study of one of the most important aspects of the Reformation in England: its impact on the status of the dead. Protestant reformers insisted vehemently that between heaven and hell there was no 'middle place' of purgatory where the souls of the departed could be assisted by the prayers of those still living on earth. This was no remote theological proposition, but a revolutionary doctrine affecting the lives of all sixteenth-century English people, and the ways in which their Church and society were organized. This book illuminates the (sometimes ambivalent) attitudes towards the dead to be discerned in pre-Reformation religious culture, and traces (up to about 1630) the uncertain progress of the 'reformation of the dead' attempted by Protestant authorities, as they sought both to stamp out traditional rituals and to provide the replacements acceptable in an increasingly fragmented religious world. It also provides detailed surveys of Protestant perceptions of the afterlife, of the cultural meanings of the appearance of ghosts, and of the patterns of commemoration and memory which became characteristic of post-Reformation England. Together these topics constitute an important case-study in the nature and tempo of the English Reformation as an agent of social and cultural transformation. The book speaks directly to the central concerns of current Reformation scholarship, addressing questions posed by 'revisionist' historians about the vibrancy and resilience of traditional religious culture, and by 'post-revisionists' about the penetration of reformed ideas. Dr Marshall demonstrates not only that the dead can be regarded as a significant 'marker' of religious and cultural change, but that a persistent concern with their status did a great deal to fashion the distinctive appearance of the English Reformation as a whole, and to create its peculiarities and contradictory impulses.

Invisible Worlds

Author : Peter Marshall
Publisher : SPCK
ISBN 13 : 0281075239
Total Pages : 273 pages
Book Rating : 4.2/5 (81 download)

DOWNLOAD NOW!

Book Synopsis Invisible Worlds by : Peter Marshall

Download or read book Invisible Worlds written by Peter Marshall and published by SPCK. This book was released on 2017-08-17 with total page 273 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: How did traditional beliefs about the supernatural change as a result of the Reformation, and what were the intellectual and cultural consequences? Following a masterly interpretative introduction, Peter Marshall traces the effects of the Reformers’ assaults on established beliefs about the afterlife. He shows how debates about purgatory and the nature of hellfire acted as unwitting agents of modernization. He then turns to popular beliefs about angels, ghosts and fairies, and considers how these were reimagined and reappropriated when cut from their medieval moorings. Contents PART 1: HEAVEN, HELL AND PURGATORY: HUMANS IN THE SPIRIT WORLD 1. After Purgatory: Death and Remembrance in the Reformation World 2. ‘The Map of God’s Word’: Geographies of the Afterlife in Tudor and Early Stuart England’ 3. Judgment and Repentance in Tudor Manchester: The Celestial Journey of Ellis Hall 4. The Reformation of Hell? Protestant and Catholic Infernalisms, c. 1560-1640 5. The Company of Heaven: Identity and Sociability in the English Protestant Afterlife PART 2: ANGELS, GHOSTS AND FAIRIES: SPIRITS IN THE HUMAN WORLD 6. Angels Around the Deathbed: Variations on a Theme in the English Art of Dying 7. The Guardian Angel in Protestant England 8. Deceptive Appearances: Ghosts and Reformers in Elizabethan and Jacobean England 9. Piety and Poisoning in Restoration Plymouth 10. Transformations of the Ghost Story in Post-Reformation England 11. Ann Jeffries and the Fairies: Folk Belief and the War on Scepticism

Heretics and Believers

Author : Peter Marshall
Publisher : Yale University Press
ISBN 13 : 0300170629
Total Pages : 689 pages
Book Rating : 4.3/5 (1 download)

DOWNLOAD NOW!

Book Synopsis Heretics and Believers by : Peter Marshall

Download or read book Heretics and Believers written by Peter Marshall and published by Yale University Press. This book was released on 2017-01-01 with total page 689 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: After Henry -- Visitation -- Services for the Living and Dead -- The Time of Schism -- Common Prayer -- 11 SLAYING ANTICHRIST -- 'Item, We will have . . .' -- 'The Perseverance of God's Word' -- Rochets and Strangers -- Mary's Mass -- The Kingdom of Christ -- Carnal Gospelling -- 12 THE TWO QUEENS -- Devices for the Succession -- God and the World Knoweth -- The Clucking Hen -- Rebellion -- Verbum Dei -- Zeal for God's Service -- Exiles and Nicodemites -- 13 TIME OF TRIAL -- Reconciliation -- Welcome the Cross of Christ -- Profitable and Necessary Doctrine -- The Hand in the Fire -- Legacies -- PART IV Unattainable Prizes -- 14 ALTERATION -- A Glass with a Small Neck -- Elevation and Coronation -- Parliamentary Problems -- Supremacy and Uniformity -- Alterations and Additions -- Old Bishops, New Bishops -- Visitation and Resistance -- 15 UNSETTLED ENGLAND -- Country Divinity -- Enormities in the Queen's Closet -- Queen Checks Bishops -- Plague and Retribution -- Mislikers of True Religion -- Rags of Rome -- The Religion Really Observed -- 16 ADMONITIONS -- The Queen of Scots -- Counter-Reformation in the North -- Aftermath -- Regnans and Ridolfi -- The Scrupulosity of Princes -- An Axe or an Act? -- Ambitious Spirits -- Grindal -- Prophesyings -- 17 WARS OF RELIGION -- A Shot Across the Bows -- Jesuits -- The Execution of Justice -- Country Divinity -- Without Tarrying for Any -- Bonds and Associations -- War -- Armada and Marprelate -- Strange Contrariety of Humours -- POSTSCRIPT -- ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS -- NOTES -- INDEX

The Reformation: A Very Short Introduction

Author : Peter Marshall
Publisher : OUP Oxford
ISBN 13 : 0191578886
Total Pages : 168 pages
Book Rating : 4.1/5 (915 download)

DOWNLOAD NOW!

Book Synopsis The Reformation: A Very Short Introduction by : Peter Marshall

Download or read book The Reformation: A Very Short Introduction written by Peter Marshall and published by OUP Oxford. This book was released on 2009-10-22 with total page 168 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Reformation transformed Europe, and left an indelible mark on the modern world. It began as an argument about what Christians needed to do to be saved, but rapidly engulfed society in a series of fundamental changes. This Very Short Introduction provides a lively and up-to-date guide to the process. It explains doctrinal debates in a clear and non-technical way, but is equally concerned to demonstrate the effects the Reformation had on politics, society, art, and minorities. Peter Marshall argues that the Reformation was not a solely European phenomenon, but that varieties of faith exported from Europe transformed Christianity into a truly world religion. The complex legacy of the Reformation is also assessed; its religious fervour produced remarkable stories of sanctity and heroism, and some extraordinary artistic achievements, but violence, holy war, and martyrdom were equally its products. A paradox of the Reformation - that it intensified intolerance while establishing pluralism - is one we still wrestle with today. ABOUT THE SERIES: The Very Short Introductions series from Oxford University Press contains hundreds of titles in almost every subject area. These pocket-sized books are the perfect way to get ahead in a new subject quickly. Our expert authors combine facts, analysis, perspective, new ideas, and enthusiasm to make interesting and challenging topics highly readable.

Catholic England

Author : Robert Norman Swanson
Publisher : Manchester University Press
ISBN 13 : 9780719034657
Total Pages : 324 pages
Book Rating : 4.0/5 (346 download)

DOWNLOAD NOW!

Book Synopsis Catholic England by : Robert Norman Swanson

Download or read book Catholic England written by Robert Norman Swanson and published by Manchester University Press. This book was released on 1993 with total page 324 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Reformation transformed English religion. For many, the spirituality of the preceding period remains largely unknown, or overburdened with Protestant mythology of decadence. These sources seek to explore the nature of religious belief and practice in pre-Reformation England, using original source material to make the debates accessible.This consideration of the sources begins with an analytical chapter discussing the varieties of spirituality in later medieval England and the ways in which they received expression, through participation in church services, actions like pilgrimages, charitable foundations, devotional readings and instruction. Opposition to prevailing spirituality, expressed through 'Lollardy', is also considered. The sources demonstrate with immediacy and potency these diverse expressions of faith and observance. Many of the documents are translated for the first time from unpublished manuscript material.This study demonstrates the vitality of the pre-Reformation religious practices, but also addresses the key methodological questions which arise from the sources about the nature of the material; its reliability as historical evidence, and the validity of external actions as testimony to intellectual and emotional experience.

Reformation England 1480-1642

Author : Peter Marshall
Publisher : Bloomsbury Publishing
ISBN 13 : 135014049X
Total Pages : 305 pages
Book Rating : 4.3/5 (51 download)

DOWNLOAD NOW!

Book Synopsis Reformation England 1480-1642 by : Peter Marshall

Download or read book Reformation England 1480-1642 written by Peter Marshall and published by Bloomsbury Publishing. This book was released on 2022-01-13 with total page 305 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Now in its third edition, Reformation England 1480-1642 provides a clear and accessible narrative account of the English Reformation, explaining how historical interpretations of its major themes have changed and developed over the past few decades, where they currently stand, and where they seem likely to go. This new edition brings the text fully up-to-date with description and analysis of recent scholarship on the pre-Reformation Church, the religious policies of Henry VIII, Edward VI and Mary I, the impact of Elizabethan and Jacobean Puritanism, the character of English Catholicism, the pitfalls of studying popular religion, and the relationship between the Reformation and the outbreak of civil war in the seventeenth century. With a significant amount of fresh material, including maps, illustrations and a substantial new Afterword on the Reformation's legacies in English (and British) history, Reformation England 1480-1642 will continue to be an indispensable guide for students approaching the complexities and controversies of the English Reformation for the first time, as well as for anyone wishing to deepen their understanding of this fascinating and formative chapter in the history of England.

Dying, Death, Burial and Commemoration in Reformation Europe

Author : Elizabeth C. Tingle
Publisher : Routledge
ISBN 13 : 1317147499
Total Pages : 242 pages
Book Rating : 4.3/5 (171 download)

DOWNLOAD NOW!

Book Synopsis Dying, Death, Burial and Commemoration in Reformation Europe by : Elizabeth C. Tingle

Download or read book Dying, Death, Burial and Commemoration in Reformation Europe written by Elizabeth C. Tingle and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2016-03-09 with total page 242 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In recent years, the rituals and beliefs associated with the end of life and the commemoration of the dead have increasingly been identified as of critical importance in understanding the social and cultural impact of the Reformation. The associated processes of dying, death and burial inevitably generated heightened emotion and a strong concern for religious propriety: the ways in which funerary customs were accepted, rejected, modified and contested can therefore grant us a powerful insight into the religious and social mindset of individuals, communities, Churches and even nation states in the post-reformation period. This collection provides an historiographical overview of recent work on dying, death and burial in Reformation and Counter-Reformation Europe and draws together ten essays from historians, literary scholars, musicologists and others working at the cutting edge of research in this area. As well as an interdisciplinary perspective, it also offers a broad geographical and confessional context, ranging across Catholic and Protestant Europe, from Scotland, England and the Holy Roman Empire to France, Spain and Ireland. The essays update and augment the body of literature on dying, death and disposal with recent case studies, pointing to future directions in the field. The volume is organised so that its contents move dynamically across the rites of passage, from dying to death, burial and the afterlife. The importance of spiritual care and preparation of the dying is one theme that emerges from this work, extending our knowledge of Catholic ars moriendi into Protestant Britain. Mourning and commemoration; the fate of the soul and its post-mortem management; the political uses of the dead and their resting places, emerge as further prominent themes in this new research. Providing contrasts and comparisons across different European regions and across Catholic and Protestant regions, the collection contributes to and extends the existing literature on this important historiographical theme.

Lollardy and Orthodox Religion in Pre-Reformation England

Author : Robert Lutton
Publisher : Boydell & Brewer
ISBN 13 : 0861932838
Total Pages : 254 pages
Book Rating : 4.8/5 (619 download)

DOWNLOAD NOW!

Book Synopsis Lollardy and Orthodox Religion in Pre-Reformation England by : Robert Lutton

Download or read book Lollardy and Orthodox Religion in Pre-Reformation England written by Robert Lutton and published by Boydell & Brewer. This book was released on 2006 with total page 254 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: An account of how, in certain parts of sixteenth-century England, challenges to conventional piety anticipated the Reformation. Here is a richly detailed account of the relationship between Lollard heresy and orthodox religion before the English Reformation. Robert Lutton examines the pious practices and dispositions of families and individuals in relationto the orthodox institutions of parish, chapel and guild, and the beliefs and activities of Wycliffite heretics. He takes issue with portrayals of orthodox religion as buoyant and harmonious, and demonstrates that late medieval piety was increasingly diverse and the parish community far from stable or unified. By investigating the generation of family wealth and changing attitudes to its disposal through inheritance and pious giving in the important Lollard centre of Tenterden in Kent, he suggests that rapid economic development and social change created the conditions for a significant cultural shift. This study contends that in certain parts of England by the early sixteenth century piety was subject to dramatic changes which, in a number of important ways, anticipated the Reformation. Dr ROBERT LUTTON teaches in the Department of History at the University of Nottingham.

The Senses and the English Reformation

Author : Matthew Milner
Publisher : Routledge
ISBN 13 : 131701636X
Total Pages : 430 pages
Book Rating : 4.3/5 (17 download)

DOWNLOAD NOW!

Book Synopsis The Senses and the English Reformation by : Matthew Milner

Download or read book The Senses and the English Reformation written by Matthew Milner and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2016-03-03 with total page 430 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: It is a commonly held belief that medieval Catholics were focussed on the 'bells and whistles' of religious practices, the smoke, images, sights and sounds that dazzled pre-modern churchgoers. Protestantism, in contrast, has been cast as Catholicism's austere, intellective and less sensual rival sibling. With iis white-washed walls, lack of incense (and often music) Protestantism worship emphasised preaching and scripture, making the new religion a drab and disengaged sensual experience. In order to challenge such entrenched assumptions, this book examines Tudor views on the senses to create a new lens through which to explore the English Reformation. Divided into two sections, the book begins with an examination of pre-Reformation beliefs and practices, establishing intellectual views on the senses in fifteenth-century England, and situating them within their contemporary philosophical and cultural tensions. Having established the parameters for the role of sense before the Reformation, the second half of the book mirrors these concerns in the post-1520 world, looking at how, and to what degree, the relationship between religious practices and sensation changed as a result of the Reformation. By taking this long-term, binary approach, the study is able to tackle fundamental questions regarding the role of the senses in late-medieval and early modern English Christianity. By looking at what English men and women thought about sight, hearing, smell, taste and touch, the stereotype that Protestantism was not sensual, and that Catholicism was overly sensualised is wholly undermined. Through this examination of how worship was transformed in its textual and liturgical forms, the book illustrates how English religion sought to reflect changing ideas surrounding the senses and their place in religious life. Worship had to be 'sensible', and following how reformers and their opponents built liturgy around experience of the sacred through the physical allows us to tease out the tensions and pressures which shaped religious reform.

Seeing Faith, Printing Pictures: Religious Identity during the English Reformation

Author : David J. Davis
Publisher : BRILL
ISBN 13 : 9004236023
Total Pages : 259 pages
Book Rating : 4.0/5 (42 download)

DOWNLOAD NOW!

Book Synopsis Seeing Faith, Printing Pictures: Religious Identity during the English Reformation by : David J. Davis

Download or read book Seeing Faith, Printing Pictures: Religious Identity during the English Reformation written by David J. Davis and published by BRILL. This book was released on 2013-03-27 with total page 259 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Scholarship on religious printed images during the English Reformation (1535-1603) has generally focused on a few illustrated works and has portrayed this period in England as a predominantly non-visual religious culture. The combination of iconoclasm and Calvinist doctrine have led to a misunderstanding as to the unique ways that English Protestants used religious printed images. Building on recent work in the history of the book and print studies, this book analyzes the widespread body of religious illustration, such as images of God the Father and Christ, in Reformation England, assessing what religious beliefs they communicated and how their use evolved during the period. The result is a unique analysis of how the Reformation in England both destroyed certain aspects of traditional imagery as well as embraced and reformulated others into expressions of its own character and identity.

Memory and the English Reformation

Author : Alexandra Walsham
Publisher : Cambridge University Press
ISBN 13 : 1108829996
Total Pages : 465 pages
Book Rating : 4.1/5 (88 download)

DOWNLOAD NOW!

Book Synopsis Memory and the English Reformation by : Alexandra Walsham

Download or read book Memory and the English Reformation written by Alexandra Walsham and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2020-11-12 with total page 465 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Recasts the Reformation as a battleground over memory, in which new identities were formed through acts of commemoration, invention and repression.

The Stripping of the Altars

Author : Eamon Duffy
Publisher : Yale University Press
ISBN 13 : 030026514X
Total Pages : 785 pages
Book Rating : 4.3/5 (2 download)

DOWNLOAD NOW!

Book Synopsis The Stripping of the Altars by : Eamon Duffy

Download or read book The Stripping of the Altars written by Eamon Duffy and published by Yale University Press. This book was released on 2022-07-12 with total page 785 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This prize-winning account of the pre-Reformation church recreates lay people’s experience of religion, showing that late-medieval Catholicism was neither decadent nor decayed, but a strong and vigorous tradition. For this edition, Duffy has written a new introduction reflecting on recent developments in our understanding of the period. “A mighty and momentous book: a book to be read and re-read, pondered and revered; a subtle, profound book written with passion and eloquence, and with masterly control.”—J. J. Scarisbrick, The Tablet “Revisionist history at its most imaginative and exciting. . . . [An] astonishing and magnificent piece of work.”—Edward T. Oakes, Commonweal “A magnificent scholarly achievement, a compelling read, and not a page too long to defend a thesis which will provoke passionate debate.”—Patricia Morison, Financial Times “Deeply imaginative, movingly written, and splendidly illustrated.”—Maurice Keen, New York Review of Books Winner of the Longman-History Today Book of the Year Award

Remembering the Reformation

Author : Alexandra Walsham
Publisher : Routledge
ISBN 13 : 0429619928
Total Pages : 298 pages
Book Rating : 4.4/5 (296 download)

DOWNLOAD NOW!

Book Synopsis Remembering the Reformation by : Alexandra Walsham

Download or read book Remembering the Reformation written by Alexandra Walsham and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2020-06-04 with total page 298 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This stimulating volume explores how the memory of the Reformation has been remembered, forgotten, contested, and reinvented between the sixteenth and twenty-first centuries. Remembering the Reformation traces how a complex, protracted, and unpredictable process came to be perceived, recorded, and commemorated as a transformative event. Exploring both local and global patterns of memory, the contributors examine the ways in which the Reformation embedded itself in the historical imagination and analyse the enduring, unstable, and divided legacies that it engendered. The book also underlines how modern scholarship is indebted to processes of memory-making initiated in the early modern period and challenges the conventional models of periodisation that the Reformation itself helped to create. This collection of essays offers an expansive examination and theoretically engaged discussion of concepts and practices of memory and Reformation. This volume is ideal for upper level undergraduates and postgraduates studying the Reformation, Early Modern Religious History, Early Modern European History, and Early Modern Literature.

Establishment Eschatology in England’s Reformation

Author : Tim Patrick
Publisher : Taylor & Francis
ISBN 13 : 1000909603
Total Pages : 187 pages
Book Rating : 4.0/5 (9 download)

DOWNLOAD NOW!

Book Synopsis Establishment Eschatology in England’s Reformation by : Tim Patrick

Download or read book Establishment Eschatology in England’s Reformation written by Tim Patrick and published by Taylor & Francis. This book was released on 2023-07-14 with total page 187 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Exploring what the early English Protestants came to believe about the afterlife, and how they arrived at their positions, this much-needed book fills a gap in the scholarly literature. In surveying the authorised doctrinal works of the English church through the Reformation period, the progress of eschatological thinking is traced from the earliest days of change to the solidification of the formularies which remain binding across the worldwide Anglican Church today. Fresh observations are made on some well-known texts such as the Books of Common Prayer, Articles of Religion and official Tudor homilies, and these are complemented by commentary on surprisingly understudied documents of the period including primers, catechisms, and the paratexts of the early printed English Bibles. The result is a fascinating study of the English reformers’ navigation past both Roman Catholic and radical anabaptist beliefs, and it shows that their arrival at a relatively barren destination was due in part to a complete switch in theological priorities and in part to a fear of the implications of formally adopting some of the highly contested views. Establishment Eschatology will prove to be an important resource for students and scholars of England’s early modern religious and cultural history.

Ritual, Belief and the Dead in Early Modern Britain and Ireland

Author : Sarah Tarlow
Publisher : Cambridge University Press
ISBN 13 : 1139492969
Total Pages : 239 pages
Book Rating : 4.1/5 (394 download)

DOWNLOAD NOW!

Book Synopsis Ritual, Belief and the Dead in Early Modern Britain and Ireland by : Sarah Tarlow

Download or read book Ritual, Belief and the Dead in Early Modern Britain and Ireland written by Sarah Tarlow and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2010-11-22 with total page 239 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Drawing on archaeological, historical, theological, scientific and folkloric sources, Sarah Tarlow's interdisciplinary study examines belief as it relates to the dead body in early modern Britain and Ireland. From the theological discussion of bodily resurrection to the folkloric use of body parts as remedies, and from the judicial punishment of the corpse to the ceremonial interment of the social elite, this book discusses how seemingly incompatible beliefs about the dead body existed in parallel through this tumultuous period. This study, which is the first to incorporate archaeological evidence of early modern death and burial from across Britain and Ireland, addresses new questions about the materiality of death: what the dead body means, and how its physical substance could be attributed with sentience and even agency. It provides a sophisticated original interpretive framework for the growing quantities of archaeological and historical evidence about mortuary beliefs and practices in early modernity.

Angels and Belief in England, 1480–1700

Author : Laura Sangha
Publisher : Routledge
ISBN 13 : 1317322800
Total Pages : 304 pages
Book Rating : 4.3/5 (173 download)

DOWNLOAD NOW!

Book Synopsis Angels and Belief in England, 1480–1700 by : Laura Sangha

Download or read book Angels and Belief in England, 1480–1700 written by Laura Sangha and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2015-10-06 with total page 304 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This study looks at the way the Church utilized the belief in angels to enforce new and evolving doctrine.Angels were used by clergymen of all denominations to support their particular dogma. Sangha examines these various stances and applies the role of angel-belief further, to issues of wider cultural and political significance.

Preparing for Death, Remembering the Dead

Author : Tarald Rasmussen
Publisher : Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht
ISBN 13 : 3647550825
Total Pages : 378 pages
Book Rating : 4.6/5 (475 download)

DOWNLOAD NOW!

Book Synopsis Preparing for Death, Remembering the Dead by : Tarald Rasmussen

Download or read book Preparing for Death, Remembering the Dead written by Tarald Rasmussen and published by Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht. This book was released on 2015-04-22 with total page 378 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Death and dying were not in the main focus of the denominational conflicts of the 16th century. However, pious literature covered these topics again and again, not only before the Reformation, but after it as well. Here, certain denominational differences are clearly visible. Partly, these differences consist in the use of genres: For example, funeral sermons are an often used genre among Lutherans, while they are much rarer in the Reformed tradition. Similar differences can be observed concerning epitaphs. In Roman Catholic areas, funeral sermons and epitaphs are common in the 16th century, too; but their religious function is often a different from the one in Lutheranism. Beyond such interdenominational differences, there are also interesting continuities and connections which the contributors of the volume analyze. For example, there is a certain continuity between 16th century Lutheran funeral sermons and the late medieval tradition of ars moriendi.The volume contains papers presented at the Second RefoRC Conference in Oslo in 2012, and is characterized by a multiconfessional and multidisciplinary approach, with contributions from Church History, Art History, Archaeology, History of Literature and Cultural History. Within a field of research dominated by specialized contributions (e.g. on ars moriendi traditions or on specific traditions of funeral monuments and funeral sermons), the broad approach of this volume may further stimulate to comparative and cross-confessional reflection.