The Reformation in the Cities. The Appeal of Protestantism to Sixteenth-Century Germany and Switzerland

Abstract

1. Introduction : trends in Reformation research -- The Reformation in medieval perspective -- The Reformation in urban perspective -- 2. Lay religious attitudes on the eve of the Reformation -- The hazardous enterprise of typifying late medieval religious life -- The burden of late medieval religion -- Lay restriction of clerical privileges -- Lay promotion of preacherships -- Iconoclasm : the response of anguished lay piety -- 3. The original Protestant message -- The assault on the confessional -- The promises of Protestant preachers -- Escape from Episcopal bureaucracy -- A new social ethic -- Farel's Sommaire -- Lay defenses of the Reformation -- Lazarus Spengler -- Jörg Vögeli -- The clergy as citizens -- Driving the message home : popular writers and humorists -- The Protestant "Utopia" of Eberlin von Günzburg -- The exorcist : Thomas Murner and Pamphilus Gengenbach -- Nicholas Manuel's Totenfresser -- Conclusion -- 4. The pattern of Reformation -- A magistrate's reform? -- The tactics of reform -- Divine and human righteousness -- Pacing the reform -- The scripture principle -- From pamphlet to catechism and church -- Ordinance : the reformers as new papists -- Conclusion.