On Wednesday, June 14, the focus was on the rural Reformation. How did church change affect the countryside? What is the connection between the Reformation and the Peasants’ War? In the afternoon, Prof. Thomas Kaufmann (University of Göttingen) presented his new research on the Peasants’ War, which will soon be published in a book. He showed that the Peasants’ War of 1525 was largely a media phenomenon, i.e., that the imaginary created the reality.
The Student Fellow presentation by Ben Crosby (McGill University) analyzed the image of Luther held by the English churchman John Jewel, who in the second half of the sixteenth century contributed decisively to the consolidation of the Reformation church system and took Luther to task for it, without, however, concealing his reservations about the Wittenberg doctrine of the Lord’s Supper.