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This essay traces the varying implications of the word-concept conversion from the early Reformation to its use in John Donne's poems and sermons, in a sermon by Lancelot Andrewes, and in John Milton's Paradise Lost. Conversion is by definition a turning, usually a turning to or toward something, although also a turning back or even around, like a top. Historically, the English word derives from the Latin verb vertere, meaning 'to turn,' and over time it develops a wide range of sociocultural applications. Its religious application--a redirecting, renewal, or reconfiguration of faith--is the most familiar. Another common word in the Renaissance that also means 'turn' is trope, which refers to a figure of speech, such as metaphor. Like a trope (or turn), a conversion (or turn) involves a change, a shift, or a movement from one thing to another. Not surprisingly, given this intertwined background, controversies about the figurative or literal interpretation of the words with which Christ instituted the Eucharist in the Bible were at the very heart of religious conversion in England and on the Continent during the Reformation. Evident in these controversies is the changing perception of matter itself, of the material world, and of its relation to spirit. In Donne's, Andrewes's, and Milton's writings, the persistence of religious tradition is equally evident, along with its radical appropriation to other meanings., During the long Reformation period in England, from the early sixteenth century well into the seventeenth, religious change-conversion in its broadest sense--coincided with the reading and interpretation of the Bible, [...]

Recent studies by Warren Carter and Boris Repschinski have argued that the notice in Matt 1:21 that Jesus 'will save his people from their sins' signals a major theme to [...]

The Birkat ha-minim, the twelfth blessing in the Shemoneh Esreh or Eighteen Benedictions, has played an important role in some reconstructions of early Christian history. (1) In 1964, for example, [...]

In 1520, Martin Luther's view of the papacy shifted dramatically and permanently. While the events of 1519 played a role in his evolving view of the papacy as the Antichrist forecast by St. Paul in 2 Thessalonians, those events alone cannot account for the suddenness and the totality of Luther's change of opinion. This essay argues that Lorenzo Valla's Discourse on the Forgery of the Alleged Donation of Constantine played a significant and too-little-appreciated role in Luther's new stance toward the papacy. This essay examines what it was about Valla's Discourse that helped convince Luther that the pope was the Antichrist., 1. INTRODUCTION In 1522, the dramatic woodcut, attributed to Hans Holbein, depicting Martin Luther as the Hercules Germanicus first appeared (fig. 1). The woodcut was part of early pro-Luther propaganda. [...]

In Canto 32 of Purgatorio Dante, after waking from a deep sleep of great peace, is witness to an allegorical pageant, or so we interpret it, seven tableaux depicting the [...]

Milton, it is often stressed, was a sect of one. However, to overemphasize the rebellious nature of Milton's early religious convictions is to conceal a basic biographical fact: he was [...]

This essay analyzes vernacular texts on rep reproduction from sixteenth-century Germany It examines religious texts, including sermons and devotional treatises for pregnant women, as well as medical texts, such as midwifery manuals, books on the 'secrets of nature, 'and anatomical treatises. Vernacular authors, both medical and clerical, ascribed enormous spiritual and symbolic significance to human generation. Conception, pregnancy and birth were linked to the biblical account of the creation and fall of mankind. In the creation of the child in the womb, sixteenth-century Germans saw an echo of the original divine act of creation. And in the sufferings of a woman in labor they saw a reenactment of Christ's Passion, Discussions of reproduction thus served as a starting point for meditations on original sin, human mortality, and the relationship between body and soul., In 1545, Walther Hermann Ryff (ca. 1500-48), a sometime apothecary turned writer, published a book on the 'secrets of nature' which he called the New Albertus Magnus. (1) The first [...]

Since the celebrations of Shakespearean characters as portrayals of universal human nature have been largely silenced by scholarly attacks on the universalizing of the bourgeois subject, analyses of early modern [...]

The relationship in the early Stuart church between doctrine and discipline -- between formal theological belief and outward matters including church governance, polity and ceremonial practice -- is important for [...]

In an article on Norway's Lutheran Reformation, theologian Andreas Seierstad argues that post-Reformation Christians felt greater assurance of salvation than their pre-Reformation (Roman Catholic) counterparts. Only evangelical Lutheranism with its [...]

LUCIO If the Duke, with the other Dukes, come not to composition with the King of Hungary, why then all the dukes fall upon the King. FIRST GENTLEMAN Heaven grant [...]

It is little known that John Foxe's Book of Martyrs included stories of Jews. Contradictory and complex, Foxe's writings on Jews show how a powerful writer conceived of the place [...]

Over centuries, the fortunes of the verb to be illustrate the involvement of language in history and history in language, and the particular role of figurative language in the early [...]

'How shall I measure out thy bloud?', or, 'Weening is not measure': TACT, Herbert, and Sacramental Devotion in the Electronic Temple Robert Whalen University of Toronto rwhalen@chass.utoronto.ca Whalen, Robert. ''How [...]

There is a long and impressive line of criticism that takes as its subject the undoubted association between Marlowe's The Tragical History of Dr. Faustus and Lutheran doctrine. Clifford Davidson, [...]