Concepts and Sources for the Study of Premodern Religion

(Beat Kümin)

Alongside the thematic sections of the module, this session addresses the study of pre-modern religion from two complementary perspectives: the essential issue of identifying / working with appropriate source materials on the one hand, and prominent conceptual approaches to late medieval / early modern religion on the other. The former will be facilitated by student-led examinations of specific types of records (which might include confessions of faith, canon law legislation, church court proceedings, religious peace agreements, theological pamphlets, Reformation-age woodcuts, heresy trials, diaries, wills …), the latter exemplified by scholarly attempts to measure the ‘success’ of the Reformation, the much-debated paradigm of confessionalization and endeavours to distinguish between elite / popular religion.

Seminar Questions

• What kinds of sources do historians have for engaging with religious beliefs and practices in the more distant past?
• Which concepts and theories help us to make sense of pre-modern religion?
• How, if at all, does pre-modern religion differ from its manifestations today?

Seminar Tasks and Preparation

• Prepare to give a short (max. 5 mins) presentation on ONE genre / type of primary source illuminating aspects of religious beliefs or practices

Core Text and Required Reading

T. Johnson, ‘Religion’, in: G. Walker (ed.), Writing Early Modern History (London, 2005), 139-58

Click on our Reading ListLink opens in a new window for electronic access to texts.

Further Reading

Peter L. Berger, The Social Reality of Religion (1969).

W.A. Christian, Local Religion in Sixteenth-Century Spain (1981)

P. Collinson, ‘Religion, Society and the Historian’, Journal of Religious History 23 (1999), 149-67

N.Z. Davis, ‘Some Tasks and Themes in the Study of Popular Religion’, in C. Trinkhaus & H.A. Oberman (eds), The Pursuit of Holiness in Late Medieval and Renaissance Religion (1974).

C. Scott Dixon, 'Reformations', in: idem & B. Kümin (eds), Interpreting Early Modern Europe (2019), 121-49 [pre-print versions of main text, excerpts from sources and appendices from relevant secondary literature]

E. Duffy, The Stripping of the Altars: Traditional Religion in England c. 1400-c. 1580 (2nd ed., New Haven, 2005), esp. ch. ‘Corporate Christians’

C. Ginzburg, The Cheese and the Worms: The Cosmos of a Sixteenth-Century Miller (English trans., 1980).

D. Hacke, ‘Church, space and conflict: Religious co-existence and political communication in 17thC Switzerland’, German History 25 (2007), 285-312

Joel F. Harrington; H. Smith, ‘Confessionalization, community and state building in Germany 1555-1870’, in: Journal of Modern History 69 (1997)

P. Marshall, ‘Religious Cultures in Early Modern Europe’, in: B. Kümin (ed.), The European World 1500-1800 (4th edn, London, 2022)

D. Mayes, Communal Christianity: The life and loss of a peasant vision in early modern Germany (Leiden: Brill Academic, 2004).

G. Parker, ‘Success and Failure During the First Century of the Reformation’, Past & Present, 136 (1992), 43-82.

W. Reinhard, 'Pressures towards Confessionalization? Prolegomena to a Theory of the Confessional Age', in Scott Dixon (ed.), The German Reformation (1999), 169-192

M. Rubin, Corpus Christi: The Eucharist in Late Medieval Culture (1991).

L. Sangha & J. Willis (eds), Understanding Early Modern Primary Sources (London, 2016)

H. Schilling, ‘Confessionalization’, in his: Religion, Political Culture and the Emergence of Early Modern Society (1992)

R.W. Scribner, Popular Culture and Popular Movements in Reformation Germany (1987).

G. Strauss, ‘Success and failure in the German Reformation’, Past & Present 67 (1975)

K. Thomas, Religion and the Decline of Magic: Studies in Popular Beliefs in Sixteenth- and Seventeenth-Century England (1971), chs 1-9.

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Sources available through the Modern Records Centre and Library

Students interested in more modern topics, may wish to consult this page outlining source guidance put together by the subject librarian at the University of Warwick Library and staff in the Modern Records Centre about collections of primary sources you can access for the study of religious cultures: https://warwick.ac.uk/fac/arts/history/students/modules/hi993/primarysources/.

They have advised that they are happy to support any student who wants to find out more about or use these collections.