EUH 5934

Readings in Late Medieval/Early Modern Europe
Europe in the Age of Reform

This course will expose students to a broad range of readings (both primary and secondary) from the Late Middle Ages to the Enlightenment.  Though in many respects the course functions as a survey on the graduate level, there is a loose organizing theme that ties the many topics we will be discussing together—the notion of reform.   We will begin in the late medieval period and specifically discuss issues of religious reform.  Though religion will be a major discussion topic throughout the semester, we will be investigating other types of “reform” from the world of learning, the political, social and cultural spheres,  and finally science.  Throughout the course students will be encouraged to use their language skills both for the weekly seminars and in the research of specific paper topics.

Students will complete the following requirements:

1. Active participation in weekly seminars

2. Rotating discussion leadership (Students will work in teams)
3. Regular reaction essays; highlighting key questions for the readings (students who lead discussion or give reports for a specific week will be exempt)

4. Thematic reports

5. 3-page essay (book review, annotated translation, summary of foreign language article on weekly topic)
6. One critical response essay during the semester (3-5 pages)
7. Participation in one outside seminar: Prof. Miri Rubin, University of London (February)
8. Primary-source focus essay (12-15 pages) with bibliography
For this final writing assignment students will select one primary-source text from our period of consideration.   The text will serve as the basis of a paper that will draw from relevant secondary and primary material.  Sample topics could include a sermon by Luther, a political treatise by James Harrington, a published account of a witch trial, a report from a battle of the Thirty Years’ War or a text by an early modern scientist.  The selection of the topic is critical to the ultimate success of the project.  Students should avoid selecting a text that is so well-known (Thomas More’s Utopia, John Calvin’s Institutes) that it would be difficult to find an original angle of analysis but should avoid a document that is so narrow it would be difficult to construct a broader argument.

Week One: Introduction
January 7

Week Two: Overview (Monday, January 14)
January 14

--Intellectual “show and tell”
Pick one source (secondary or primary/book or article) that has been critical in your intellectual formation to date.  In a short oral presentation (no more than 5 minutes) highlight those features of the work that you have selected that you find so compelling.  Since we are all coming from very different backgrounds and will most likely be unfamiliar with the particulars of each other’s fields, focus in particular on the methodological distinctives of your text.  This is not a written assignment.  No need to turn anything in.

--Reading assignments
Overview text—Eugene Rice, The Foundations of Early Modern Europe (London: Norton, 1994)
Methodological article—Miri Rubin, “Religion,” in Ulinka Rublack, ed., A Concise Companion to History, (Oxford: OUP,  2012), 317-330

--Writing assignment
I want a short one-page reaction paper to the readings.   Here I want you to highlight one or two key questions that emerge from the readings that are worth discussing.  You could simply list in bullet point fashion a series of questions or develop these observations in one or two paragraphs. For this assignment I want you to work comparatively by contrasting two chapters from Rice or one chapter in Rice and the Rubin essay.   To ensure that we have complete coverage of the Rice book, I will assign each one of you a chapter that you must cover.  Then select one other chapter or the Rubin article.

Bryan Kozik—Chapter 1
Tomás Castellanos—Chapter 2
Rance Cannon—Chapter 3
Brad Massy—Chapter 4
Greg Landingham—Chapter 5
Rodney Sebastian—Chapter 6
Danielle Reid—Miri Rubin

This assignment is not graded.  It essentially functions as part of the discussion component of the course.

Week Three
January 21: MLK Holiday
Preliminary Research Topic

Week Four: Late Medieval Religion I
January 28

Richard Wunderli, Peasant Fires. The Drummer of Niklashausen (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1992)

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André Vauchez, “Saints and pilgrimages: new and old,” in Rubin and Sanders, ed. Christianity in Western Europe c. 1100- c. 1500, (Cambridge: CUP, 2009), 324-339

Charles Zika, “Hosts, Processions and Pilgrimages: Controlling the Sacred in Fifteenth-Century Germany,” Past and Present 118 (1988), 35-64

Koen Goudriaan, “Empowerment through reading, writing and example: the Devotio Moderna,” in Rubin and Sanders, ed. Christianity in Western Europe c. 1100- c. 1500, (Cambridge: CUP, 2009), 407-419

Geert Grote, “Resolutions and intentions, but not Vows,” “Noteworthy Sayings of Master Geert,” and “Letter 62 on Patience and the Imitation of Christ” in John van Engen, ed. Devotio Moderna: Basic Writings (Mahwah, NJ: Paulist Press, 1988), 65-77; 84-91



Week Five: Miri Rubin Seminar
February 4: Public Lecture
February 5: Faculty/Graduate Student Seminar
February 6: Graduate Student Breakfast

Miri Rubin, “Religious culture in town and country: reflections on a great divide,” in David Abulafia, Michael Franklin and Miri Rubin, eds. Church and City 1000-1500. Essays in honour of Christopher Brooke, (Cambridge: CUP, 2002) 3-22.

Ora Limor, “Christians and Jews,” in Rubin and Sanders, ed. Christianity in Western Europe c. 1100- c. 1500 (Cambridge: CUP, 2009), 135-148

Howard Louthan, “Making Bohemia Holy: Christian Saints and Jewish Martyrs,” in Converting Bohemia (Cambridge: CUP, 2009), 277-316, esp. 300-316.

Peter Biller, “Christians and Heretics,” in Rubin and Sanders, ed. Christianity in Western Europe c. 1100- c. 1500 (Cambridge: CUP, 2009), 170-186.



Week Six: Late Medieval Religion II
February 11

Caroline Bynum, Wonderful Blood. Theology and Practice in Late Medieval Germany and Beyond (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2007), 1-45

John van Engen, “Multiple Options: The World of the Fifteenth-Century Church,” Church History 77 (2008), 257-284

Daniel Hobbins, “The Schoolman as Public Intellectual: Jean Gerson and the Late Medieval Tract,” The American Historical Review 108 (2003), 1308-1337.

David Mengel, “From Venice to Jerusalem and beyond: Milic of Kromeriz and the Topography of Prostitution in Fourteenth-Century Prague,” Speculum 79 (2004), 407-442


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Rachel Fulton, “Mary,” in Rubin and Sanders, ed. Christianity in Western Europe c. 1100- c. 1500 (Cambridge: CUP, 2009), 283-296

John Coakley, “The Powers of Holy Women” and “Managing Holiness: Raymond of Capua and Catherine of Siena,” in Coakley, Women, Men and Spiritual Power (New York: Columbia University Press, 2006) 7-24; 170-192

Christopher Ocker, “The Bible in the Fifteenth Cenutry,” in Rubin and Sanders, ed. Christianity in Western Europe c. 1100- c. 1500 (Cambridge: CUP, 2009), 472-493.

Katherine Jansen, “Mary Magdalen and the Mendicants: The Preaching of Penance in the Late Middle Ages,” Journal of Medieval History 21 (1995), 1-25 (Option 1)

Katherine Jansen, “The Word and its diffusion,” in Rubin and Sanders, ed. Christianity in Western Europe c. 1100- c. 1500, (Cambridge: CUP, 2009), 114-132. (Option 2)


Week Seven: Protestant Reformation
February 18
Desiderius Erasmus
    From the Colloquies
        “An Inquisition into Faith” in Robert Adams, ed. The Praise Folly and Other Writings (New York: Norton, 1989), 212-222
    Letters—to Bishop Tomicki, in Robert Adams, ed. The Praise Folly and Other Writings (New York: Norton, 1989), 259-264
    From the Adages
        “Sileni Alcibiadis,” in Margaret Mann Phillips, ed. Erasmus on his Times (Cambridge: CUP, 1967), 77-86

Martin Luther, “The Freedom of a Christian Man,” in Hans Hillerbrand, ed. The Protestant Reformation (New York: Harper, 1968), 3-28

John Calvin, “Reply to Sadoleto,” in Hans Hillerbrand, ed. The Protestant Reformation (New York: Harper, 1968), 153-172

John Calvin, Treatise on Relics

Thomas Müntzer, “Sermon to the Princes,” in Michael Baylor, ed. The Radical Reformation, (Cambridge: CUP, 1991), 11-32

Michael Sattler, “The Schleitheim Confession,” in Michael Baylor, ed. The Radical Reformation, (Cambridge: CUP, 1991), 172-180

The Autobiography of Thomas Platter

Robert Scribner, “Elements of Popular Belief,” in The Handbook of European History 1400-1600, vol. 1 (Leiden: Brill, 1994), 231-262

Recommended for background reading
Euan Cameron, The European Reformation (Oxford: OUP, 1991)—2nd edition 2012


Week Eight: Catholic Reform
February 25
John Bossy, “The Counter Reformation and the People of Catholic Europe, “ in David Luebke, ed., The Counter Reformation. Essential Readings (Oxford: Blackwell, 1999), 65-82

H. Outram Evenett, “Spirituality,” in David Luebke, ed., The Counter Reformation. Essential Readings (Oxford: Blackwell, 1999), 47-63

John O’Malley, “The Historiography of the Society of Jesus: Where Does It Stand Today?,” in John O’Malley, et. al., The Jesuits. Cultures, Sciences, and the Arts 1540-1773 (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1999), 3-37

Keith Luria, “’Popular Catholicism’ and the Catholic Reformation,” in Kathleen Comerford, ed. Early Modern Catholicism. Essays in Honour of John W. O’Malley, S.J., (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2001), 114-130

Wolfgang Reinhard, “Reformation, Counter-Reformation, and the Early Modern State: A Reassessment,” in David Luebke, ed., The Counter Reformation. Essential Readings (Oxford: Blackwell, 1999), 105-128 (optional)


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“Introduction,” in Lu Ann Homza, ed., The Spanish Inquisition, 1478-1614, An Anthology of Sources (Indianapolis: Hacket, 2006) ix-xxxvii, 168-175

Richard Kagan & Abigail Dyer, eds., Inquisitorial Inquiries 2nd edition  (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2011), 21-63

Christine Caldwell Ames, “Does Inquisition belong to Religious History,” American Historical Review 110 (2005), 11-37



Spring Break



Week Nine: Reforming the Political World
March 11

Week Ten: Europe and the World
March 18

Week Eleven: Reforming the Social World (Europe’s outsiders)
March 25

Week Twelve: Confessional Co-existence and Conflict
April 1

Week Thirteen: Religion and Enlightenment
April 8

Week Fourteen: Reports I
April 15

Week Fifteen: Reports II
April 22