Routledge The Peace of Augsburg and the Meckhart Confession: Moderate Religion in an Age of Militancy (Routledge Research in Early Modern History)

Product Description Taking the religiously diverse city of Augsburg as its focus, this book explores the underappreciated role of local clergy in mediating and interpreting the Peace of Augsburg in the decades following its 1555 enactment, focusing on the efforts of the preacher Johann Meckhart and his heirs in blunting the cultural impact of confessional religion. It argues that the real drama of confessionalization was not simply that which played out between princes and theologians, or even, for that matter, between religions; rather, it lay in the daily struggle of clerics in the proverbial trenches of their ministry, who were increasingly pressured to choose for themselves and for their congregations between doctrinal purity and civil peace. About the Author Adam Glen Hough is a graduate of the University of Arizona’s Division for Late Medieval and Reformation Studies, and a past fellow at the Herzog August Bibliothek and the University of Victoria’s Centre for Studies in Religion and Society.