Religious Identity in an Early Reformation Community: Augsburg, 1517 to 1555. By Michele Zelinsky Hanson. Studies in Central European History XLV. Leiden and Boston: Brill Academic Publishers. 2009. Pp. xi+237. Cloth $158.00. ISBN 978-90-04-16673-8.

摘要

Michele Zelinsky Hanson’s revised dissertation contributes to a growing sense thatrnthe early Reformation period in Germany was experienced by common people inrnways that differed sharply from the experience of theologians and magistrates.rnAmong other important results, Hanson notes the fluidity of religious identityrnin this period, the inextricably interwoven nature of religious, cultural, political,rnfamilial, and economic interests (among others), and the non-confessionalrnnature of a religiosity that was defined more by practice and choice of churchrnor preacher than by creed or confession. Family ties, civic pride, economic self-rninterest, and the political ramifications—at least in the 1550s—of religiousrnchoices all figure prominently in Hanson’s account of the reasons Reformation-rnera Augsburgers almost never quarrelled with each other over religion, butrnrather with the authorities (and vice versa). This not merely contradicts the domi-rnnant paradigm for the last thirty years, confessionalization, but it also continues andrnextends Robert Scribner’s work on the common people and their experiencernduring the age of Reformation and Counter-Reformation in the Empire. Notrnconfessional or theological issues, but everyday religious experience and practice,rnin their rich and complex forms, are Hanson’s subjects.