Get 20M+ Full-Text Papers For Less Than $1.50/day. Start a 14-Day Trial for You or Your Team.

Learn More →

Art and Piety in Lutheran Germany and Beyond

Art and Piety in Lutheran Germany and Beyond Art and Piety in Lutheran Germany and BeyondBy Bridget HealProtestantism was, without doubt, a religion of the Word. During the earlymodern period, Lutheran religious life was built around the spoken andprinted word: around the sermon; around the use of catechisms, prayerbooks and hymnals; and around Luther’s own translation of the Bible. TheWittenberg Reformation matured alongside the printing press, and vernacular print production – from polemical pamphlets to Bibles, catechisms andspiritual literature – was crucial to its history. The word had, as ThomasKaufmann has recently argued, a “culture-shaping significance” for Lutheranism everywhere. Books not only disseminated Luther’s message but alsobecame the most “profound symbol of Lutheran confessionalism.”1 Thispowerful paradigm of a word- and book-oriented Protestant piety and identity has, for too long, co-existed with a narrative that recounts the rejectionof visual piety and marginalization of religious art. Reformation historianshave recognized that Lutherans made extensive use of visual propaganda,and that the Wittenberg workshop of Lucas Cranach and his son producednumerous images in the service of Luther and his supporters. But Lutheranart is still characterised as primarily polemical and pedagogical, as unnecessary and incidental to true, word-based Protestant piety and to Lutheranconfessional identity.In this brief essay I shall focus on one particular http://www.deepdyve.com/assets/images/DeepDyve-Logo-lg.png Archiv für Reformationsgeschichte - Archive for Reformation History de Gruyter

Art and Piety in Lutheran Germany and Beyond

Download PDF
10 pages

Loading next page...
 
/lp/de-gruyter/art-and-piety-in-lutheran-germany-and-beyond-ZVwxnCVTYI

References (3)

Publisher
de Gruyter
Copyright
© 2017 by Gütersloher Verlagshaus
eISSN
2198-0489
DOI
10.14315/arg-2017-0117
Publisher site
See Article on Publisher Site

Abstract

Art and Piety in Lutheran Germany and BeyondBy Bridget HealProtestantism was, without doubt, a religion of the Word. During the earlymodern period, Lutheran religious life was built around the spoken andprinted word: around the sermon; around the use of catechisms, prayerbooks and hymnals; and around Luther’s own translation of the Bible. TheWittenberg Reformation matured alongside the printing press, and vernacular print production – from polemical pamphlets to Bibles, catechisms andspiritual literature – was crucial to its history. The word had, as ThomasKaufmann has recently argued, a “culture-shaping significance” for Lutheranism everywhere. Books not only disseminated Luther’s message but alsobecame the most “profound symbol of Lutheran confessionalism.”1 Thispowerful paradigm of a word- and book-oriented Protestant piety and identity has, for too long, co-existed with a narrative that recounts the rejectionof visual piety and marginalization of religious art. Reformation historianshave recognized that Lutherans made extensive use of visual propaganda,and that the Wittenberg workshop of Lucas Cranach and his son producednumerous images in the service of Luther and his supporters. But Lutheranart is still characterised as primarily polemical and pedagogical, as unnecessary and incidental to true, word-based Protestant piety and to Lutheranconfessional identity.In this brief essay I shall focus on one particular

Journal

Archiv für Reformationsgeschichte - Archive for Reformation History – de Gruyter

Published: Oct 26, 2017

There are no references for this article.