The Peace of Augsburg and the Meckhart Confession

Download or read book The Peace of Augsburg and the Meckhart Confession written by Adam Glen Hough and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2019-03-26 with total page 408 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 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.