Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Preface
- Abbreviations
- Map
- PART I INTELLECTUAL RENEWAL
- PART II THE GRAPES OF WRATH
- PART III NEW JERUSALEM WITHIN THE OLD WALLS
- 10 Magistri and magistracy: the old and new masters
- 11 The great visitation: bishop and city
- 12 The onset of the Counter-Reformation
- 13 The Reformation: a German tragedy
- Student population at German universities 1385–1540
- Chronological outline
- Bibliography
- Index of names and places
- Index of modern authors
- Subject index
10 - Magistri and magistracy: the old and new masters
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 07 October 2011
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Preface
- Abbreviations
- Map
- PART I INTELLECTUAL RENEWAL
- PART II THE GRAPES OF WRATH
- PART III NEW JERUSALEM WITHIN THE OLD WALLS
- 10 Magistri and magistracy: the old and new masters
- 11 The great visitation: bishop and city
- 12 The onset of the Counter-Reformation
- 13 The Reformation: a German tragedy
- Student population at German universities 1385–1540
- Chronological outline
- Bibliography
- Index of names and places
- Index of modern authors
- Subject index
Summary
Popular piety forms the vital substratum of all theology. It fashions the domestic climate in which future theologians are nurtured and it also determines the response and range of influence enjoyed by a new theological ‘school’. The history of Mariology provides a convincing example of the enormous creative power of a piety that managed to triumph over periodic resistance from ‘high’ theology. By winning the coming generation of theologians as its most enthusiastic publicists and advocates before the bar of academic theology, the new veneration for the Virgin overcame what had previously passed for immutable dogma.
The stream of theology which finds its channels in teaching and preaching according to scripture and tradition forms different currents. But any theology whose course skirts popular piety can at best leave its mark on centuries of academia or impress posterity in a delayed reaction; in its own epoch it is powerless to move and mould history.
In the course of confessional conflict the sixteenth century witnessed the mobilization of the area of popular devotion we have come to call lay piety. The rapid expansion of the educational system, from elementary schools to universities, produced the same effect on the general population as had the growth of scholarship in the urban upper classes and at the courts of the nobility. The aspiring, educated segments of society now found themselves able to articulate their religious needs, a capability once largely limited to the clergy.
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- Information
- Masters of the ReformationThe Emergence of a New Intellectual Climate in Europe, pp. 187 - 209Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 1981