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Book Cover for: Reformation and the Culture of Persuasion, Andrew Pettegree

Reformation and the Culture of Persuasion

Andrew Pettegree

Why did people choose the Reformation? What was in the evangelical teaching that excited, moved or persuaded them? Andrew Pettegree tackles these questions directly by re-examining the reasons that moved millions to this decisive and traumatic break with a shared Christian past. He charts the separation from family, friends, and workmates that adherence to the new faith often entailed and the new solidarities that emerged in their place. He explores the different media of conversion through which the Reformation message was communicated and the role of drama, sermons, song and the book. His findings offer a persuasive new answer to the critical question of how the Reformation could succeed as a mass movement in an age before mass literacy.

Book Details

  • Publisher: Cambridge University Press
  • Publish Date: Jul 11st, 2005
  • Pages: 252
  • Language: English
  • Edition: undefined - undefined
  • Dimensions: 9.01in - 6.44in - 0.87in - 1.12lb
  • EAN: 9780521841757
  • Categories: Europe - GeneralChristianity - History

About the Author

Pettegree, Andrew: - Andrew Pettegree is Professor of Modern History and Founding Director of the Reformation Studies Institute at the University of St Andrews. He is the author of a number of studies of the European Reformation, sixteenth century Europe, and the history of the printed book.

Praise for this book

"Reformation and the Culture of Persuasion will sustain and fuel the still lively debate about the character, impact and progress of this momentous movment of religious renewal."
-Times Literary Supplement
"There is a great deal to ponder in this illuminating book. It is written with Pettegree's customary clarity, it selflessly doffs its cap to the work of other historians, and it rightly stresses that the business of religious persuasion was often a communal, shared event. There are...ideas to which not everyone will assent, but the book certainly forces the reader to question many assumptions about how early modern people took the dramatic step of casting off one faith so that they might embrace another."
-Jonathan Wright, H-Net
"The rewards of this book are the products of Pettegree's profound acquaintance with the Reformed world across linguistic boundaries and his intellectual creativity. He has digested the principles and the scholarly fruits of interdisciplinary research and drawn them into a coherent relationship to one another...this is a survey of lasting historiographic significance."
-Susan C. Karant-Nunn, University of Arizona, Church History