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The Age of Reform as an Age of Consolation

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  30 October 2017

Ronald K. Rittgers
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Abstract

This article seeks to provide a new way of interpreting the Age of Reform and its legacy on the occasion of the Protestant Reformation's 500th anniversary. Over the past several decades, many scholars have interpreted the Age of Reform through the lens of a “Discipline Paradigm.” They have stressed the centrality of social and moral discipline in the Age of Reform and its legacy for the modern world. This paradigm has inspired much important and original scholarship, and yet it has also failed to take account of significant aspects of the Age of Reform. This article seeks to revise and challenge the “Discipline Paradigm” by focusing on one of the most important and widespread practices of the period: verbal consolation. There was an unprecedented flowering of such consolation in the Age of Reform and yet scholars have largely ignored it in their treatments of the period. This article seeks to demonstrate how viewing the Age of Reform as an Age of Consolation can provide important new insight into the character and legacy of the Age of Reform, and, indeed, into human existence in the past.

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Articles
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Church History , Volume 86 , Issue 3 , September 2017 , pp. 607 - 642
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Copyright © American Society of Church History 2017 

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References

1 On Geizkofler, see Holland, Hyacinth, “Geizkofler, Lukas,” in Allgemeine Deutsche Biographie (Leipzig, 1878), 8:529 Google Scholar, https://www.deutsche-biographie.de/gnd118690299.html#adbcontent. See also Alois Schweizer, “Lucas Geizkofler (1550–1620): Bildungsweg, Berufstätigkeit und soziale Umwelt eines Augsburger Juristen und Späthumanisten” (PhD diss., Tübingen University, 1976); and Schaffenrath, Florian, “Der Humanist Lucas Geizkofler zwischen Innsbruck und Augsburg: Seine Trauerrede auf Matthias Schenck,” in Humanismus und Renaissance in Augsburg: Kulturgeschichte einer Stadt zwischen Spätmittelalter und Dreißigjährigem Krieg, ed. Michael, Gernot Müller (Berlin: De Gruyter, 2010), 157–186 Google Scholar.

2 Geizkofler and his wife did see each other during this time. She gave birth to their second child, another son, on May 28, 1592, and was thus pregnant when Geizkofler sent her this letter. He had received word that she was having a difficult pregnancy, along with other unspecified trying news, which was the immediate precursor to his decision to write this letter. Still, he indicates in the letter that the loss of their first son remained paramount in his mind, and the consolation he offers was intended in the first place to speak to this situation. Wolf, Adam, ed., Lucas Geizkofler und seine Selbstbiographie, 1550–1620 (Vienna: Wilhelm Braumüller, k. k. Hof- und Universitätsbuchhändler, 1873), 152 Google Scholar.

3 Ibid., 151–152. For a brief discussion of this letter in the context of Geizkofler's piety, see Schweizer, Lucas Geizkofler, 171.

4 See Eire, Carlos M. N., Reformations: The Early Modern World, 1450–1650 (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 2016)Google Scholar. On the Reformation as Christianization, see Hendrix, Scott, Recultivating the Vineyard: The Reformation Agendas of Christianization (Louisville, Ky.: Westminster John Knox Press, 2004)Google Scholar.

5 Ozment, Steven, The Age of Reform, 1250–1550: An Intellectual and Religious History of Late Medieval and Reformation Europe (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1980)Google Scholar. I extend the chronological boundaries of the Age of Reform further than Ozment.

6 My thinking here has been influenced especially by the work of Berndt Hamm. See Bast, Robert J., ed. The Reformation of Faith in the Context of Late Medieval Theology and Piety: Essays by Berndt Hamm (Leiden: Brill, 2004), 254–272 Google Scholar.

7 See Gregory, Brad S., The Unintended Reformation: How a Religious Revolution Secularized Revolution (Cambridge, Mass.: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2012), 1–24 Google Scholar.

8 On the need for such an expansive definition, see, Balthussen, H., ed., Greek and Roman Consolations: Eight Studies of a Tradition and Its Afterlife (Swansea: Classical Press of Wales, 2013)Google Scholar, xiv. In the same volume, see also J. H. D. Scourfield, “Towards a Genre of Consolation,” 1–36.

9 See Rittgers, Ronald K., The Reformation of Suffering: Pastoral Theology and Lay Piety in Late Medieval and Early Modern Germany (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012), 37–62 Google Scholar.

10 See Rittgers, Ronald K., The Reformation of the Keys: Confession, Conscience, and Authority in Sixteenth-Century Germany (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2004)Google Scholar; Rittgers, Reformation of Suffering; and related articles and book chapters.

11 See Hsia, R. Po-Chia, Social Discipline in the Reformation: Central Europe 1550–1750 (London: Routledge, 1989), 151–159 Google Scholar. The classic treatment of lay resistance to clerical ministrations in the Reformation period remains Gerald Strauss, Luther's House of Learning: Indoctrination of the Young in the German Reformation (Baltimore, Md.: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1978)Google Scholar.

12 “Ego-documents” refers to various kinds of autobiographical sources. For further information, see n94 below.

13 On the long history of consolation in the West, see Rittgers, Reformation of Suffering, 37–62. The following paragraph draws on this chapter.

14 On consolation as a form of “emotional management,” see Leila Ruth Watkins, “Forms of Consolation in Early Modern English Poetry” (PhD diss., University of Michigan, 2014), 3. On the human need for meaning and the way that suffering threatens this meaning, see Berger, Peter, “The Problem of Theodicy,” in The Sacred Canopy: Elements of a Sociological Theory of Religion (New York: Double Day, 1967), 53–81 Google Scholar.

15 See McClure, George W., Sorrow and Consolation in Italian Humanism (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1991), 12–14 Google Scholar.

16 See von Moos, Peter, Consolatio: Studien zur mittellateinischen Trostliteratur über den Tod und zum Problem der christlichen Trauer, 4 vols. (Munich: Wilhem Fink, 1971–1972)Google Scholar; and Schrock, Chad. D., Consolation in Medieval Narrative: Augustinian Authority and Open Form (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2015)Google Scholar. See also, Kohler, Eike, “Trost,” in Theologische Realenzyklopädie Studienausgabe (hereafter cited as TRE), ed. Müller, Gerhard (Berlin: Walter de Gruyter, 2001), 34:143–153 Google Scholar; and Bernt, G., Gnädinger, L., Schmidtke, W., and Gleißner, R., “Trostbücher,” in Lexikon des Mittelalters, (Munich: Artemis, 1997), 8:1048–1051 Google Scholar. On this literature from the eleventh to the early sixteenth century, see Auer, Albert, Johannes von Dambach und die Trostbücher von 11. bis zum 16. Jahrhundert (Münster: Verlag der Aschendorffschen Verlagsbuchhandlung, 1928)Google Scholar.

17 See Walsh, P. G., trans. and ed., Boethius: The Consolation of Philosophy (New York: Oxford University Press, 1999), xliv–l Google Scholar; and Kaylor, Noel Harold Jr., The Medieval Consolation of Philosophy: An Annotated Bibliography (New York: Garland, 1992)Google Scholar.

18 According to von Moos, consolatio appears most frequently in letters in the Middle Ages. See Consolatio, 1:38. On Alcuin's letters of consolation, see pp. 105–111.

19 On the paucity of works of consolation in tenth and early eleventh centuries, see ibid., Consolatio, 187.

20 See Lynch, Joseph, The Medieval Church: A Brief History (London: Longman, 1992), 118 Google Scholar, 128.

21 See von Moos, Consolatio, 1:184.

22 Ibid., 448.

23 Von Moos demonstrates that works of consolation only began to become plentiful in the High Middle Ages. See ibid., p. 199. On Peter the Venerable's letters of consolation, see ibid., 224–278; and Radice, Betty, trans., The Letters of Abelard and Heloise (London: Penguin, 1974), 277–284 Google Scholar. On Bernard's works of consolation, along with those of Aelred, see von Moos, Consolatio, 278–339 and 340–397, respectively. On the slow growth of literacy in the late eleventh and twelfth centuries, see Stock, Brian, The Implications of Literacy: Written Languages and Models of Interpretation in the Eleventh and Twelfth Centuries (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1983)Google Scholar. See also Saenger, Paul, “Literacy, Western Europe,” in Dictionary of the Middle Ages, ed. Strayer, Joseph (New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1986), 7:597–602 Google Scholar.

24 See Rittgers, Reformation of the Keys, 25, 38.

25 See Rawski, Conrad H., Petrarch's Remedies for Fortune Fair and Foul: A Modern English Translation of De remediis utriusque Fortune, with a Commentary, 5 vols. (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1991)Google Scholar; Erasmus, Letter of Comfort in Adversity (Epistola consolatoria in adversis), in Collected Works of Erasmus, ed. O'Malley, John W., vol. 60, Spiritualia and Pastoralia (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1999), 185–201 Google Scholar; and More, Thomas, Dialogue of Comfort against Tribulation, ed. Geus, Terri Ann (Mineola, N.Y.: Dover, 2016)Google Scholar.

26 Meister Eckhart, Daz buoch der götlîchen trœstunge, in Meister Eckhart: Die deutschen und lateinischen Werke; Die deutschen Werke, ed. and trans. Quint, Josef, vol. 5, Traktate (Stuttgart: W. Kohlhammer, 1963), 3–61 Google Scholar; Eckhart, The Book of Consolation, in Meister Eckhart: The Essential Sermons, Commentaries, Treatises, and Defense, ed. and trans. Edmund Colledge, O.S.A. and McGinn, Bernard (New York: Paulist, 1981), 209–239 Google Scholar; Auer, Johannes von Dambach und die Trostbücher; Tambaco, Johannes de, Consolatio theologiae (Strasburg: Drucker des Henricius Ariminensis, [not after 1479])Google Scholar, Herzog August Bibliothek (hereafter cited as HAB), Wolfenbüttel, Germany, H: E 162.2° Helmst.; and Miller, Clyde Lee, trans., Jean Gerson: The Consolation of Theology, De Consolatione Theologiae (New York: Abaris, 1998)Google Scholar. On Gerson as doctor consolatorius, see Burrows, Mark Stephen, Jean Gerson and De Consolatione Theologiae (1418): The Consolation of a Biblical and Reforming Theology for a Disordered Age (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 1991), 41 Google Scholar. See below for a brief discussion of the importance of The Imitation of Christ, traditionally ascribed to à Kempis, in the Catholic consolation tradition.

27 See Rainer Rudolf, “Ars moriendi,” in TRE, 4:145.

28 On unction, see Rittgers, Reformation of Suffering, 21–24. On the lay ars moriendi, see Resch, Claudia, Trost im Angesicht des Todes: Frühe reformatorische Anleitungen zur Seelsorge an Kranken und Sterbenden (Tübingen: A. Francke, 2006), 42–47 Google Scholar.

29 For an example of consolation among monastics, see the letter correspondence between Suso, Henry and Stagel, Elsabeth in “Heinrich Seuse, Dominikaner, an Elisabeth Stagel, Klosterfrau in Tötz,” in Deutsche Privatbriefe des Mittelalters, vol. 2, Geistliche-Bürger, ed. Steinhausen, Georg (Berlin: Weidmannsche Buchhandlung, 1907)Google Scholar, sec. 1, ch. 4, pp. 3–5.  An English translation can be found in Tobin, Frank, trans., Henry Suso: The Exemplar, with two German sermons (New York: Paulist, 1989), 340–341 Google Scholar. For an example of a nun who wrote letters of consolation to her family members in the late fifteenth century, see Rittgers, Reformation of Suffering, 81–82. Monks and friars also exercised a ministry of consolation with laypeople through hearing their confessions. One may find late medieval lay letters of consolation in the archives of Nuremberg (for example: Wolf Behaim, “Zehn Briefe des Wolf Behaim, jüngerer Bruder des Martin Behaim, aus Lyon und Genf an seinen Vetter Michel Behaim (Peham) in Nürnberg,” 19 May, 1496, Rep E 11/ II FA Behaim, Nr. 583, no. 10, Stadtarchiv Nürnberg; Barbara Holzschuchin, “Briefe von verschiedenen an Michael Behaim,” 21 January 1505, Rep. II/67, Behaim Archiv, Nr. 12, Germanisches Nationalmuseum Archiv).

30 On literacy among Catholic burghers, see Lundin, Matthew, Paper Memory: A Sixteenth-Century Townsman Writes His World (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2012)CrossRefGoogle Scholar. On the importance of preaching in late medieval and early modern Catholicism, see Frymire, John M., The Primacy of the Postils: Catholics, Protestants, and the Dissemination of Ideas in Early Modern Germany (Leiden: Brill, 2010)Google Scholar.

31 On the use of images to console in the later Middle Ages, see Hamm, Berndt, “Die Dynamik von Bamrherzigkeit, Gnade und Schutz in der vorreformatorischen Religiosität,” Lutherjahrbuch 81 (2014): 97–134 Google Scholar. See also the forthcoming book by Mitchell Merback, Perfection's Therapy: An Essay on Albrecht Dürer's Melencolia I (Cambridge, Mass.: Zone, forthcoming). (I am grateful to Merback for sharing the unpublished manuscript with me.) Yu Na Han, a doctoral student at Johns Hopkins University, is currently working on a dissertation entitled “Consolation of the Image: Pastoral Care and Visual Culture in Reformation Germany, 1520–1570.”

32 See Brady, Thomas A., “Confessionalization: The Career of a Concept,” in Confessionalization in Europe, 1555–1700: Essays in Honor and Memory of Bodo Nischan, ed. Headley, John M., Hillerbrand, Hans J., and Papalas, Anthony J. (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2004), 2–3 Google Scholar.

33 On the work of Oestreich, Reinhard, and Schilling in the development of the Confessionalization Thesis, see Hsia, Social Discipline in the Reformation, 1–9. For more recent treatments of the thesis, see Brady, “Confessionalization,” 1–20; and Lotz-Heumann, Ute, “Confessionalization,” in Reformation and Early Modern Europe: A Guide to Research, ed. Whitford, David M. (Kirksville, Mo.: Truman State University Press, 2008), 136–157 Google Scholar. On the “moral police” in confessional culture, see Hsia, Social Discipline in the Reformation, 122–142.

34 See Gorski, Philip S., The Disciplinary Revolution: Calvinism and the Rise of the State in Early Modern Europe (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2003), xv–xvi Google Scholar. See also, Gorski, , The Protestant Ethic Revisited (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 2011)Google Scholar.

35 Gorski, The Disciplinary Revolution, x.

36 Foucault, Michael, Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison, trans. Sheridan, Alan (New York: Vintage, 1995)Google Scholar; Foucault, , History of Sexuality, trans. Hurley, Robert, vol. 3, The Care of the Self (New York: Pantheon, 1986), 37–68 Google Scholar; Foucault, , Religion and Culture, ed. Carrette, Jeremy R. (New York: Routledge, 1999)Google Scholar; and Foucault, , Technologies of the Self: A Seminar with Michel Foucault, ed. Martin, Luther H., Gutman, Huck, and Hutton, Patrick H. (Amherst, Mass.: University of Massachusetts Press, 1988)Google Scholar. On Foucault, see Falzon, Christopher, O'Leary, Timothy, Sawicki, Jana, eds., A Companion to Foucault (Chichester: Wiley-Blackwell, 2013)Google Scholar; and Gutting, Gary, ed., The Cambridge Companion to Foucault (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005)Google Scholar.

37 Sabean, David Warren, “Production of the Self during the Age of Confessionalism,” Central European History 29, no. 1 (1996): 1–18 Google Scholar.

38 Bozeman, Theodore Dwight, The Precisianist Strain: Disciplinary Religion and Antinomian Backlash in Puritanism to 1638 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2004)Google Scholar.

39 Delumeau, Jean, Sin and Fear: The Emergence of a Western Guilt Culture, 13th–18th Centuries, trans. Nicholson, Eric (New York: St. Martin's, 1990)Google Scholar. Originally published as Le Péché et la Peur: La Culpabilisation en Occident, XIIIe-XVIIIe Siècles (Paris: Fayard, 1983)Google Scholar.

40 Strauss, Luther's House of Learning.

41 Karant-Nunn, Susan, The Reformation of Ritual: An Interpretation of Early Modern Germany (London: Routledge, 1997), 5 Google Scholar.

42 Karant-Nunn, Susan, The Reformation of Feeling: Shaping the Religious Emotions in Early Modern Germany (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2010), 9 CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

43 It should be noted that Karant-Nunn has stressed the importance of consolation among early modern Lutherans. See The Reformation of Feeling, 96, 97, 178, 201, 226, 251.

44 See Dixon, C. Scott, Contesting the Reformation (Malden, Mass.: Wiley-Blackwell, 2012), 172 Google Scholar.

45 See Gregory, Unintended Reformation, 372; Eire, Reformations, 616; and MacCulloch, Diarmaid, The Reformation: A History (New York: Viking, 2004), 591 Google Scholar.

46 See Brady, “Confessionalization,” 1.

47 For an important exception, see n43 above.

48 See MacCulloch, The Reformation, 591–592.

49 See Heuman, “Confessionalization,” 145; Eire, Reformations, 616; and Dixon, Contesting the Reformation, 171.

50 Brady, “Confessionalization,” 12.

51 John O'Malley, Trent and All That: Renaming Catholicism in the Early Modern Era (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2000), 139.

52 My thinking here has been influenced especially by the nuanced treatment of discipline and consolation found in the work of Thomas Tentler and Berndt Hamm. See Tentler, Thomas, Sin and Confession on the Eve of the Reformation (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1977), xiii Google Scholar, xvi, 349; and Bast, Essays by Berndt Hamm, esp. 45–46.

53 See n23 above.

54 Ozment, Age of Reform, 199; and Franz, Gunter, ed., Huberinus—Rhegius—Holbein: Bibliographische und druckgeschichtliche Untersuchung der verbreitesten Trost- und Erbauungschriften des 16. Jahrhunderts (Nieuwkoop: B. De Graaf, 1973), 215 Google Scholar. On the success of printed works of devotion in England, see Ryrie, Alec, Being Protestant in Reformation Britain (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013), 5 Google Scholar, 22.

55 Edwards, Mark U. Jr., Printing, Propaganda, and Martin Luther (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1994), 163–164 Google Scholar. On Luther's success as an author, see Pettegree, Andrew, Brand Luther: How an Unheralded Monk Turned His Small Town into a Center of Publishing, Made Himself the Most Famous Man in Europe—and Started the Protestant Reformation (New York: Penguin, 2015)Google Scholar.

56 For publication statistics, see Rittgers, The Reformation of Suffering, 271. See also, Rittgers, “Pastoral Writings,” in The Oxford Encyclopedia of Martin Luther, ed. Nelson, Derek and Hinlicky, Paul (Oxford: Oxford University Press, forthcoming [2017])Google Scholar.

57 See Pettegree, Brand Luther, 115, 210, 213.

58 Franz, Huberinus—Rhegius—Holbein, 213–224, 266.

59 See Jonathan Reimer, “The Life and Writings of Thomas Becon, 1512–1567” (PhD diss., Pembroke College, Cambridge University, 2016), 145–147.

60 For publication statistics, see Rittgers, Reformation of Suffering, 269–274.

61 See Burnett, Amy Nelson, Teaching the Reformation: Ministers and Their Message in Basel, 1529–1629 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006), 238 CrossRefGoogle Scholar, 272; and Karant-Nunn, Reformation of Feeling, 101–131.

62 See Gordon, Bruce, “Bullinger's Vernacular Writings: Spirituality and the Christian Life,” in Architect of the Reformation: An Introduction to Heinrich Bullinger, 1504–1575, ed. Gordon, Bruce and Campi, Emidio (Grand Rapids, Mich.: Baker Academic, 2004), 117–134 Google Scholar.

63 For publication statistics, see Rittgers, Reformation of Suffering, 270, 274. On Bullinger's Bericht der Kranken, see Mühling, Andreas, “Welchen Tod sterben wir?—Heinrich Bullingers ‘Bericht der Kranken’ (1535),” Zwingliana 29 (2002): 55–68 Google Scholar.

64 I am grateful to Jonathan Reimer for his help in identifying key works of consolation among early modern English Protestants.

65 For publication statistics, see Marsh, Christopher, “‘Departing Well and Christianly’: Will-making and Popular Religion in Early Modern England,” in Religion and the English People, 1500–1640: New Voices and Perspectives, ed. Carlson, Eric Josef (Kirksville, Mo.: Thomas Jefferson University Press, 1998), 204 Google Scholar; and Patterson, Mary Hampson, Domesticating the Reformation: Protestant Best Sellers, Private Devotion, and the Revolution of English Piety (Madison, N.J.: Fairleigh Dickinson University Press, 2007), 319 Google Scholar. Patterson also provides a biographical sketch of Becon and an analysis of Sick Mans Salve, see 81–100, 101–154. On Becon's importance and success as a devotional writer, see Ryrie, Being Protestant, 5. See also Reimer, Jonathan, “The Life and Writings of Thomas Becon,” and Reimer, “Thomas Becon's Henrician Writings: Composition and County Patronage, 1541–1543,” Reformation 21, no. 1 (2016): 8–24 Google Scholar.

66 Ryrie, Being Protestant, 22n29. For an overview of Norden and A Pensive Mans Practice, see Patterson, Domesticating the Reformation, 157–236.

67 For publication statistics, see the relevant search on The English Short Title Catalogue, http://estc.bl.uk/F/?func=file&file_name=login-bl-estc.

68 According to Ryrie, Bayly's Practice was the most successful devotional handbook in early modern Britain. See Being Protestant, 22n30.

69 For publication statistics, see Rittgers, Reformation of Suffering, 273.

70 See “Comforting Letter to a Widow, c. 1549” and “Letter of Consolation to Sick Saint, c. 1557,” in The Complete Writings of Menno Simons, c. 1496–1561, trans. Verduin, Leonard, ed. Wenger, J. C. (Scottdale, Pa.: Herald, 1984), 1028–1029 Google Scholar, 1050–1052.

71 See discussions of unction and confession, respectively, in Rittgers, Reformation of Suffering, 21–25, 27–32.

72 Gerson, Jean, Opus [or Opusclum] Tripartitum De Præceptis Decalogi, De Confessione & de Arte moriendi, in Johannes Gerson: Opera Omnia, ed. Du Pin, Louis Ellies (Hildesheim: Georg Olms, 1987)Google Scholar, vol. 1, part 3, col. 427.

73 See n74 below.

74 Gerson's De arte moriendi first appeared in French and then in Latin. La science de bien mourir may be found in Jean Gerson: Oeuvres Complètes, ed. Glorieux, Mgr. (Paris: Desclée & Cie, 1966), 404–407 Google Scholar. On the popularity of this work, see Christoph Burger, “Gerson, Johannes,” in TRE, 12:534. The Incunabula Short Title Catalogue contains twelve Latin editions, ten French editions, three German editions, and one Dutch and Low German edition each. See the relevant search on http://data.cerl.org/istc/_search.

75 For example, see Robert Bellarmine's The Art of Dying Well (1619), which is extant in fifty-eight editions and was translated from Latin into multiple European vernaculars. Donnelly, John Patrick SJ and Teske, Roland J. SJ, trans. and eds., Robert Bellarmine: Spiritual Writings (New York: Paulist, 1989), 23–24 Google Scholar. See also Pedro de Ribadeneira, Tratado de la tribulacion (1589), which is extant in multiple Latin, Spanish, German, and French editions.

76 For treatments of consolation in Of the Imitation and Christ, see 1:12; 2:8–9,12; 3:1–2, 16, 19, 25, 29, 34, 47; 4:2–4. In Introduction to the Devout Life, see 3:3; 4:5, 11, 14. In The Spiritual Exercises, see especially “The Contemplation to Attain Divine Love” in the Fourth Week and “Rules for the Discernment of Spirits.” On the theme of consolation in the latter section of The Spiritual Exercises, see O'Malley, John W., The First Jesuits (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1993), 41–43 Google Scholar. On the importance of the theme in Of the Imitation of Christ, see ibid., 83, 265.

77 Habsburg, Maximilian von, Catholic and Protestant Translations of the Imitatio Christi, 1425–1650: From Late Medieval Classic to Early Modern Bestseller (Farnham: Ashgate, 2011), 1, 255–307 Google Scholar.

78 O'Malley, First Jesuits, 19, 82, 141.

79 For examples, see ibid., 83; Becon, Thomas, Sick Mans Salve (London: John Daye, 1572), 364 Google Scholar, Early English Books Online, http://eebo.chadwyck.com/home (hereafter cited as EEBO); and Hieronymus Weller, Der ander Theyl des Buchs (Nuremberg, 1565), fols. Aiii r-v, http://reader.digitale-sammlungen.de/resolve/display/bsb10984870.html.

80 See Rhegius, Seelenärtzney, in Gunter, Huberinus—Rhegius—Holbein, 243; Bullinger, Heinrich, Bericht der krancken (Zurich: Froschauer, 1544)Google Scholar, Aiiii r, HAB, H: S412.8° Helmst. (5); and Green, Ian, “Varieties of Domestic Devotion in Early Modern English Protestantism,” in Private and Domestic Devotion in Early Modern Britain, ed. Ryrie, Alec and Martin, Jessica (Farnham: Ashgate, 2012), 28–29 Google Scholar.

81 On the importance of such conferences in early modern English piety, see Ryrie, Being Protestant, 392. For an example of a devotional work organized around a stylized conference between a pastor and a layperson, see Norden's, John A Pensive Mans Practice (London, 1623)Google Scholar, EEBO.

82 Becon, Sick Mans Salve, 526.

83 Green, “Varieties of Domestic Devotion,” 28–29.

84 See Kirchenordnung des Noppus (Regensburg, 1543), in Die evangelischen Kirchenordnungen des XVI. Jahrhunderts, ed. Emil Sehling, 19 vols. (Leipzig: O. R. Riesland; Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 1902–1913, 1955–), 13:410a; Kaspar Löners Kirchenordnung (Nördlingen, 1544) in Sehling, Die evangelischen Kirchenordnungen, 12:315b; and Herzogtum Pfalz-Neuburg Generalartikel von 1576 in Sehling, Die evangelischen Kirchenordnungen, 13:196a.

85 de Niet, Johan, “Comforting the Sick: Confessional Cure of Souls and Pietist Comfort in the Dutch Republic,” in Confessionalism and Pietism: Religious Reform in Early Modern Europe and North America, ed. van Lieburg, Fred (Mainz: Von Zabern, 2006), 197–212 Google Scholar; and de Niet, , Ziekentroosters op de pastorale markt 1550–1880 (Rotterdam: Erasmus, 2006)Google Scholar.

86 Brown, Christopher Boyd, “Sixteenth-Century Midwives and the Lutheran Doctrine of Vocation.” Journal of Lutheran Ethics 4, no. 2 (February 2004)Google Scholar: https://www.elca.org/JLE/Articles/783. See also Rittgers, Reformation of Suffering, 189.

87 See the section entitled “Von heimsouchung der krancken” in “Die Basler reformationsordnung, 1529, April 1,” Aktensammlung zur Geschichte der Basler Reformation in den Jahren 1519 bis Anfang 1534, ed. Dürr, Emil and Roth, Paul, vol. 3, 1528 bis Juni 1529 (Basel: Verlag der Historischen und Antiquarischen Gesellschaft, 1937), 395 Google Scholar.

88 Brown, Christopher Boyd, Singing the Gospel: Lutheran Hymns and the Success of the Reformation (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2005)Google Scholar.

89 On consolation during exile, see Hans Leaman, “The Consolation of Exile: Confessional Identity and Migration in the German Reformation” (PhD diss., Yale University, 2014). On consolation in the midst of persecution, see Hillerbrand, Hans, ed., The Reformation: A Narrative Related by Contemporary Observers and Participants (Grand Rapids, Mich.: Baker, 1972), 234 Google Scholar.

90 Terpstra, Nicholas, “Death and Dying in Renaissance Confraternities,” in Crossing the Boundaries: Christian Piety and the Arts in Italian Medieval and Renaissance Confraternities, ed. Eisenbichler, Konrad (Kalamazoo, Mich.: Medieval Institute Publications, 1991), 179–200 Google Scholar. There is also evidence of Catholics consoling one another in times of persecution. See Covington, Sarah, “Consolation on Golgotha: Comforters and Sustainers of Dying Priests in England, 1580–1625,” The Journal of Ecclesiastical History 60, no. 2 (April 2009): 270–293 Google Scholar.

91 Rittgers, Reformation of Suffering, 234 (with reference to Rhegius's Soul-Medicine).

92 The work is extant in two editions. For a discussion of this work, see Rittgers, Ronald K., “Productive Misunderstanding in the Early Reformation Revisited: The Case of Lazarus Spengler's A Consoling and Christian Instruction and Medicine in All Adversities (1521),” Reformation and Renaissance Review: Journal of the Society for Reformation Studies 12, no. 1 (2010): 19–42 CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

93 McKee, Elsie Anne, ed., Katharina Schütz Zell, vol. 2, The Writings, A Critical Edition (Leiden: Brill, 1999), 3 Google Scholar.

94 For an introduction to ego-documents in the early modern period, see the sources listed in Rittgers, Ronald K., “Grief and Consolation in Early Modern Lutheran Devotion: The Case of Johannes Christoph Oelhafen's Pious Meditations on the Most Sorrowful Bereavement (1619),” Church History 81, no. 3 (September 2012), 605–606n19 Google Scholar.

95 See Rittgers, Ronald K., “Protestants and Plague: The Case of the 1562/3 Pest in Nürnberg,” in Piety and Plague: From Byzantium to the Baroque, ed. Mormando, Franco and Worcester, Thomas (Kirksville, Mo.: Truman State University Press, 2007), 132–155 Google Scholar.

96 See Coleman, Patrick, Lewis, Jayne, and Kowalik, Jill, eds., Representations of the Self from the Renaissance to Romanticism (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000)Google Scholar; Helgeson, James, The Lying Mirror: The First Person Stance and Sixteenth-Century Writing (Geneva: Droz, 2012)Google Scholar; Mascuch, Michael, Origins of The Individualist Self: Autobiography and Self-Identity in England, 1591–1791 (Cambridge: Polity, 1997)Google Scholar; Paige, Nicolas D., Being Interior: Autobiography and the Contradictions of Modernity in Seventeenth-Century France (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2001)Google Scholar; and Wahrman, Dror, The Making of the Modern Self: Identity and English Culture in the 18th Century (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 2004)Google Scholar. It should be noted that Lucas Geizkofler also produced an autobiography. See n2 and n137.

97 Matthew David Lundin, “The Mental World of a Middling Burgher: The Family Archive of Cologne Lawyer Hermann Weinsberg (1518–1597)” (PhD diss., Harvard University, 2006), 74n114. Lundin has published this dissertation as Paper Memory (see n30 above).

98 Ryrie, Being Protestant, 287. See also von Habsburg, Catholic and Protestant Translations of the Imitatio Christi; Damrau, Peter, The Reception of English Puritan Literature in Germany (London: Maney, 2006)Google Scholar; Edgar C. McKenzie, “British Devotional Literature and the Rise of German Pietism” (PhD diss., University of St. Andrews, 1984); and Lund, Mary Ann, Melancholy, Medicine, and Religion in Early Modern England: Reading “The Anatomy of Melancholy” (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010), 60–67 Google Scholar.

99 See Balthussen, Hans, “Nicholas of Modrus's De consolatione (1465–1466): A New Approach to Grief Management,” in Ordering Emotions in Europe, 1100–1800, ed. Broomhall, Susan (Leiden: Brill, 2015), 106Google Scholar; Steiger, Johann Anselm, “Die Gesichts- und Theologie-Vergessenheit der heutigen Seelsorgelehre: Anlaß für einen Rückblick in den Schatz reformatorischer und orthodoxer Seelsorgeliteratur,” Kerygma und Dogma 39, no. 1 (January/March 1993): 64–87 Google Scholar; and Linton, Anna, Poetry and Parental Bereavement in Early Modern Lutheran Germany (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008)Google Scholar.

100 There was a parallel development in physical self-care. See Russell, Paul A., “Syphilis, God's Scourge or Nature's Vengeance? The German Printed Response to a Public Problem in the Early Sixteenth Century,” Archive for Reformation History 80 (1989): 286–287 Google Scholar.

101 For an early attempt at providing such a treatment, see Auer, Johannes von Dambach und die Trostbücher.

102 See Leroux, Neil R., Martin Luther as Comforter: Writings on Death (Leiden: Brill, 2007)Google Scholar; and Mennecke-Haustein, Ute, Luthers Trostbriefe (Gütersloh: Gerd Mohn, 1989)Google Scholar.

103 See Rittgers, Reformation of Suffering, which deals largely with Lutheran sources, although in conversation with Catholic, Reformed Protestant, and Radical ones.

104 Mary Lindemann, Medicine and Society in Early Modern Europe (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press), 10.

105 MacCulloch, The Reformation, 16–26, 70–76; Kieckhefer, Richard, “Major Currents in Late Medieval Devotion,” in History of Christian Spirituality, ed. Raitt, Jill, vol. 2, High Middle Ages and Reformation (New York: Continuum, 1987), 75–108 Google Scholar; and Moeller, Bernd, “Piety in Germany around 1500,” in The Reformation in Medieval Perspective, ed. Ozment, Steven E. (Chicago: Quadrangle, 1971), 50–75 Google Scholar. On the growth of lay literacy in the later Middle Ages and early modern period, see Lynch, The Medieval Church, 318–319; and Maag, Karin, “Education and Literacy,” in The Reformation World, ed. Pettegree, Andrew (London: Routledge, 2000), 542–543 Google Scholar.

106 Tanner, Norman P. SJ, ed., Decrees of the Ecumenical Councils, vol. 1, Nicaea to Lateran V (Washington, D.C.: Georgetown University Press, 1990), 245.1–23Google Scholar.

107 See Duggan, Lawrence, “Fear and Confession on the Eve of the Reformation” Archiv für Reformationsgeschichte 75 (1984): 153–175 Google Scholar; Myers, W. David, “Poor Sinning Folk”: Confession and Conscience in Counter-Reformation Germany (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1996), 27–60 Google Scholar; and Rittgers, Reformation of the Keys, 25–28.

108 See Boyle, Leonard E., “The Fourth Lateran Council and Manuals of Popular Theology,” in The Popular Literature of Medieval England, ed. Heffernan, Thomas J. (Knoxville: The University of Tennessee Press, 1985), 30–43 Google Scholar.

109 See Bast, Essays by Berndt Hamm, 1–43; and Hamm, Berndt, “Die ‘nahe Gnade’—innovative Züge der spätmittelalterlichen Theologie und Frömmigkeit,” in Berndt Hamm: Religiosität im späten Mittelalter. Spannungspole, Neuaufbrüche, Normierugen, ed. Friedrich, Reinhold and Simon, Wolfgang (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2011), 544–560 Google Scholar.

110 See Fulton's extensive treatment of Anselm's prayers in From Judgment to Passion: Devotion to Christ and the Virgin Mary, 800–1200 (New York: Columbia University Press, 2002), 142–192 Google Scholar. On the importance of Anselm in the development of Passion piety, see also Viladesau, Richard, The Beauty of the Cross: The Passion of Christ in Theology and the Arts—From the Catacombs to the Eve of the Renaissance (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006), 76 Google Scholar.

111 See Ozment, Steven E., The Reformation in the Cities: The Appeal of Protestantism in Sixteenth-Century Germany and Switzerland (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1975), 22–32 Google Scholar; and Ozment, Age of Reform, 216–222. For an assessment of Ozment's thesis, see Rittgers, Ronald K., “Anxious Penitents and the Appeal of the Reformation: Ozment and the Historiography of Confession,” in Piety and Family in Early Modern Europe: Essays in Honour of Steven Ozment, ed. Kaplan, Benjamin and Forster, Marc (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2005), 50–69 Google Scholar.

112 See Conway, William Martin, trans. and ed., The Writings of Alrecht Dürer (New York: Philosophical Library, 1958), 155–156 Google Scholar.

113 See Rittgers, Ronald K., “Christianization Through Consolation: Urbanus Rhegius's Soul-Medicine for the Healthy and the Sick in These Dangerous Times (1529),” in Reformation as Christianization: Essays on Scott Hendrix's Christianization Thesis, ed. Marie, Anna Johnson and John Maxfield (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2012), 321–345 Google Scholar.

114 See Rittgers, Reformation of Suffering, 156. See also Vincent Evener, “‘Enemies of the Cross’: Suffering, Salvation, and Truth in Sixteenth-Century Religious Controversy” (PhD diss., University of Chicago, 2014).

115 See Rittgers, Reformation of Suffering, 106.

116 Lederer, David, Madness, Religion, and the State in Early Modern Europe: A Bavarian Beacon (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006), 16 Google Scholar.

117 See Frymire, The Primacy of the Postils, 27; and Gerrish, Brian, Grace and Gratitude: The Eucharistic Theology of John Calvin (Minneapolis, Minn.: Fortress, 1993), 82–86 Google Scholar. I am grateful to Ward Holder, Bruce Gordon, and Sujin Pak for helpful e-conversations on the Word as sacrament in Reformed Protestantism. On preaching as a Protestant sacrament, see Ozment, Age of Reform, 221.

118 On ancient precedents for the early Protestant “therapeutic” view of words, see Entralgo, Pedro Láin, The Therapy of the Word in Classical Antiquity, ed. and trans. Rather, L. J. and Sharp, John M. (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1970)Google Scholar. On Catholicism as a religion of the Word, see Frymire, Primacy of the Postils.

119 One also sees it in Burton's Anatomy of Melancholy. See Lund, Melancholy, Medicine, and Religion in Early Modern England, 27–29.

120 Becon, Sick Mans Salve, 33.

121 Bozeman, The Precisianist Strain, 147; Cameron, Euan, The European Reformation, 2nd ed. (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012), 438 Google Scholar.

122 See Delumeau, Sin and Fear.

123 See von Moos, Consolatio, 3:269, no. 1268.

124 See Soergel, Philip M., Miracles and the Protestant Imagination: The Evangelical Wonder Book in Reformation Germany (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012)Google Scholar. See also Hsia, Social Discipline in the Reformation, 112.

125 For an example, see Rittgers, Reformation of Suffering, 214.

126 See Lederer, Madness, Religion, and the State in Early Modern Europe, 9–10; Schmidt, Jeremy, Melancholy and the Care of the Soul: Religion, Moral Philosophy, and Madness in Early Modern England (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2007), 11 Google Scholar; and Rittgers, Reformation of Suffering, 8, 105–106, 147–148, 212–217.

127 For an example, see McKee, Katharina Schütz Zell, 2:5.

128 See n126 above.

129 See Schmidt, Melancholy and the Care of the Soul, 71.

130 For a general treatment of religion and emotion, see Corrigan, John, Crump, Eric, and Kloos, John, Emotion and Religion: A Critical Assessment and Annotated Bibliography (Westport, Conn.: Greenwood, 2000)Google Scholar; and Corrigan, John, ed., The Oxford Handbook of Religion and Emotion (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008)Google Scholar.

131 See Rittgers, “Grief and Consolation in Early Modern Lutheran Devotion,” 629n137.

132 I am an advocate of “chastened realism,” a term coined by Mark Noll. For a discussion of this epistemological stance, see Noll's four-part series on the “History Wars” in Books and Culture (especially vol. 5, no. 6, November/December 1999), along with his two related book chapters: “The Potential of Missiology for the Crises of History,” in History and the Christian Historian, ed. Wells, Ronald A. (Grand Rapids, Mich.: Wm. B. Eerdmans, 1998), 106–123 Google Scholar; and “Traditional Christianity and the Possibility of Historical Knowledge,” in Religious Advocacy and American History, ed. Kucklick, Bruce and Hart, D. G. (Grand Rapids, Mich.: Wm. B. Eerdmans, 1997), 28–53 Google Scholar.

133 See Wolf, Lucas Geizkofler und seine Selbstbiographie, 152–153; and Lucas Geizkofler, Ein hoch tröstliche vnnd nutzliche Erinerung von dem volkhommnen hochwürdisten [sic] verdienst vnsers lieben Heren vnnd einigen Selligmacher Jesu Christ, pp. 43v–44r, 144r–v, HAB, HS 62.13 Aug. 8°.

134 See Wolf, Lucas Geizkofler und seine Selbstbiographie, 152–153.

135 Luther refers to “der froelich wechßel” in the German version of The Freedom of the Christian. See D. Martin Luthers Werke, Kritische Gesamtausgabe, Schriften (Weimar: Böhlau, 1897), 7:25.34Google Scholar.

136 Ryrie, Being Protestant, 475.

137 Fortunately, Geizkofler's autobiography is published in Wolf, Lucas Geizkofler und seine Selbstbiographie. It is available on Google Books (https://books.google.com) and can be downloaded on Google Play (https://play.google.com). For an example of an ego-document that required considerably more effort to access, see Rittgers, “Grief and Consolation in Early Modern Lutheran Devotion.”

138 For a discussion of how meditation on religious images could similarly encourage “attention to the self,” see Merback, “Therapies of the Image in the Age of Dürer,” in Perfection's Therapy.

139 See Taylor, Charles, “Inwardness,” Part 2 in Sources of the Self: The Making of the Modern Identity (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1989)Google Scholar.

140 See Porter, Roy, ed., Rewriting the Self: Histories from the Renaissance to the Present (London: Routledge, 1997), 1–7 Google Scholar. See also Hindmarsh, Bruce, The Evangelical Conversion Narrative: Spiritual Autobiography in Early Modern England (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005), 20Google Scholar.

141 See Coleman, Lewis, and Kowalik, Representations of the Self; and Seigel, Jerrold E., The Idea of the Self: Thought and Experience in Western Europe Since the Seventeenth Century (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2005), esp. 4–5Google Scholar.

142 See Goldstein, Jan, The Post-Revolutionary Self: Politics and Psyche in France, 1750–1850 (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2005), 1–2 Google Scholar.

143 For criticism of the concept of “the self,” see Kenny, Anthony, “Body, Soul, and Intellect in Aquinas,” in From Soul to Self, ed. Crabbe, M. James (London: Routledge, 1999), 39–40 Google Scholar. On the distinction between having a self versus having a sense of having a self, in the same volume, see Galen Strawson “The Sense of Self,” especially pp. 127 and 131. See also Hunt, Lynn, “The Self and its History,” American Historical Review 119, no. 5 (December 2014): 1576–1586 Google Scholar. For a robust defense of the existence of a non-Cartesian self, see Sorabji, Richard, Self: Ancient and Modern Insights about Individuality, Life, and Death (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2006)Google Scholar.

144 See Paster, Gail Kern, Rowe, Katherine, and Floyd-Wilson, Mary, eds., Reading the Early Modern Passions: Essays in the Cultural History of Emotion (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2004), 15 Google Scholar.

145 It should be noted that Taylor does not think the modern sense of self is the only, or even the best, way of “being a self”; in fact, he is quite critical of it. See Sources of the Self, 175.

146 Taylor writes, “a turn to the self as a self. This is what I mean by radical reflexivity.” See Sources of the Self, 176. On Augustine and the development of interiority, see Cary, Philipp, Augustine's Invention of the Inner Self: The Legacy of a Christian Platonist (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000)Google Scholar.

147 Taylor speaks of a flowering of Augustinian spirituality, and therefore of Augustinian inwardness, across the confessions in 16th and 17th centuries. Sources of the Self, 141

148 Taylor observes that, for Augustine, reflexivity is a good thing, but it becomes evil “when this reflexivity is enclosed on itself”: Sources of the Self, 139. On the modern quest for authenticity, see Taylor, Charles, “The Age of Authenticity,” in A Secular Age (Cambridge, Mass.: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2007)Google Scholar.

149 Taylor, Sources of the Self, 184.

150 Taylor, A Secular Age, 68–71.

151 Ibid., 88, 541.

152 Ibid., 68, 82, 158.

153 See Sabean, David and Stefanovska, Malina, eds. Space and Self in Early Modern European Cultures (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2012), 3 Google Scholar.

154 But see n145 above.

155 See Paster, Rowe, and Floyd-Wilson, Reading the Early Modern Passions, 15; and Hindmarsh, The Evangelical Conversion Narrative, 20.

156 Taylor, Sources of the Self, 204–206.

157 Taylor, A Secular Age, 66, 68.

158 Other scholars have heeded Taylor's statement about the importance of social practices in the formation of identity. See Wahrman, The Making of the Modern Self.

159 Wolf, Lucas Geizkofler und seine Selbstbiographie, 151–152.

160 According to Taylor, Augustine turned inward to be drawn upward by and to God. See Sources of the Self, 134.

161 See A History of Private Life, ed. Ariès, Philippe and Duby, Georges, vol. 3, Passions of the Renaissance, ed. Chartier, Roger (Cambridge, Mass.: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 1989), 111 Google Scholar.

162 See Hindmarsh, The Evangelical Conversion Narrative; Coleman, Lewis, and Kowalik, Representations of the Self; Helgeson, The Lying Mirror; Mascuch, Origins of The Individualist Self; Paige, Being Interior; and Mullan, David George, Narratives of the Religious Self in Early-Modern Scotland (Farnham: Ashgate, 2010)Google Scholar.

163 Mascuch, Origins of The Individualist Self, 75; Hindmarsh, The Evangelical Conversion Narrative, 21–22.

164 Karant-Nunn, Reformation of Ritual, 193.

165 On the importance of a relational or open sense of self among early modern Christians, see Hindmarsh, The Evangelical Conversion Narrative, vii–viii; and Robert Dimit, “Divine Grace, the Humoral Body, and the ‘Inner Self’ in Seventeenth-Century France and England,” in Sabean and Stefanovska, Space and Self in Early Modern European Cultures, 153–164. As with other members of the growing early modern bourgeoisie, it is possible that Geizkofler's inward self was confined to one aspect of his life, the devotional part, while he adopted other senses of self in his public or professional life. On this topic, see Debra Shuger, “Life-Writing in Seventeenth-Century England,” in Coleman, Lewis, and Kowalik, Representations of the Self, 63–78.

166 Taylor notes that one mark of modern identity is the high value it places on the avoidance of suffering. See Sources of the Self, 12.

167 Taylor makes the distinction between a premodern “porous self” (that is, a self that is open to supernatural intervention) and the modern “buffered self” (that is, a self that is bounded, disenchanted, and detached) in A Secular Age, 37–38. According to Taylor, the buffered self did not emerge until the eighteenth century.

168 I am borrowing the idea of the intensification of Christian devotion preparing the ground for modernity from Taylor. See A Secular Age, 145.

169 It is equally dangerous to view the Age of Reform solely through the lens of its devotional literature and all of the consolation that it assumes and promises. See Eire, Reformations, 719.

170 Goldstein, Jan, Console and Classify: The French Psychiatric Profession in the Nineteenth Century (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1987), 5, 382 Google Scholar. See also Lederer, Madness, Religion, and the State in Early Modern Europe.

171 See Rittgers, Reformation of Suffering, 262–263.

172 For Taylor's discussion of Providential Deism, see “Providential Deism” in A Secular Age. For a discussion of how the decline in belief in traditional Christian theodicy contributed to the decline of Christianity in the West, see Berger, “The Problem of Theodicy,” in Sacred Canopy.

173 Lipsius, Justus, On Constancy: De Constantia translated by Sir John Stradling (1595), ed., Sellars, John (Exeter: Bristol Phoenix, 2006)Google Scholar. On the popularity of On Constancy in the early modern period, see p. 5. Lipsius also figures prominently in Taylor's account of the rise and eventual secularization of western society. See A Secular Age, 117, 155.

174 Lipsius, On Constancy, 2.

175 Lipsius does seek to refute Stoic determinism, which is incompatible with Christianity, in On Constancy, bk. 1, ch. 20.

176 See Walsh, Boethius, xliv–l. See also Kaylor, The Medieval Consolation of Philosophy, 12. Petrarch also offered his contemporaries a largely Ciceronian solace, but there was more Christian content to this consolation than one finds in The Consolation of Philosophy. See Rawski, Petrarch's Remedies for Fortune Fair and Foul, vol. 1, bk. 1, p. 37; and vol. 3, bk. 2, pp. 39, 76, 279.

177 See Sellars, introduction to On Constancy, 12.

178 Habermas, Jürgen, The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere: An Inquiry into a Category of Bourgeois Society, trans. Burger, Thomas (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 1992), 42–43 Google Scholar.

179 Lewis, C. S., “Addison,” in Eighteenth Century English Literature: Modern Essays in Criticism, ed. Clifford, James, (New York: Oxford University Press, 1959), 147 Google Scholar, 155.

180 Smith, G. Gregory, ed., The Spectator by Joseph Addison, Richard Steele, and Others, vol. 1 (London: J. M. Dent and Sons, 1915)Google Scholar, Number 163, 6 September 1711, pp. 293, 296.

181 See Gregory, Unintended Reformation.

182 Nipperdy, Thomas, “The Reformation and the Modern World,” in Politics and Society in Reformation Europe: Essays for Sir Geoffrey Elton on His Sixty-Fifth Birthday, ed. Kouri, E. I. and Scott, Tom (Houndmills: Macmillan, 1987), 539Google Scholar.

183 Ibid., 540.

184 For discussion of the secularization thesis, especially whether it continues to possess explanatory power (which I think it does in modified form), see Bruce, Steven, ed., Religion and Modernization: Sociologists and Historians Debate the Secularization Thesis (Oxford: Clarendon, 1992)Google Scholar; Bruce, , Religion in the Modern World: From Cathedrals to Cults (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1996)Google Scholar; and Berger, Peter, ed., The Desecularization of the World: Resurgent Religion and World Politics (Grand Rapids, Mich.: Wm. B. Eerdmans, 1999)Google Scholar.

185 Nipperdy, “The Reformation and the Modern World,” 552. Hindmarsh also allows his sources to challenge modern notions of identity. See Evangelical Conversion Narrative, vii and 346.