Reforming the Church before Modernity: Patterns, Problems and Approaches (Church, Faith and Culture in the Medieval West) - Hardcover

Bellitto, Christopher M.

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0754653552 ISBN 13: 9780754653554

Publisher: Routledge, 2013

Synopsis

Reforming the Church before Modernity considers the question of ecclesial reform from late antiquity to the 17th century, and tackles this complex question from primarily cultural perspectives, rather than the more usual institutional approaches. The common themes are social change, centres and peripheries of change, monasticism, and intellectuals and their relationship to reform. This innovative approach opens up the question of how religious reform took place and challenges existing ecclesiological models that remains too focussed on structures in a manner artificial for pre-modern Europe. Several chapters specifically take issue with the problem of what constitutes reform, reformations, and historians' notions of the periodization of reform, while in others the relationship between personal transformation and its broader social, political or ecclesial context emerges as a significant dynamic. Presenting essays from a distinguished international cast of scholars, the book makes an important contribution to the debates over ecclesiology and religious reform stimulated by the anniversary of Vatican II.

About this title

About the Author

Dr Christopher M. Bellitto is Assistant Professor in the History Department at Kean University, Union, New Jersey, USA, and Dr Louis I. Hamilton is a Post Doctoral Associate in the History Department at Rutgers University, New Brunswick, New Jersey, USA.

Edition details

• Publisher: Routledge
• Publication date: 2013
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0754653552
• ISBN 13: 9780754653554
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 248
• Editor: Hamilton Louis I.