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With foundations in medieval times, religious conversations became a powerful control instrument of religious and confessional politics, which was meant as a remedy to inner-Christian and inner-confessional quarrels in the aftermath of the Reformation (16/17th century). From different confessional angles this volume deals with these often transient but highly influential religious conversations at the intersections of Theology and Politics.

In 1550–51, English Archbishop of Canterbury Thomas Cranmer engaged in a debate with Bishop Stephen Gardiner. Archbishop Cranmer was asserting a new Reformed view for England's Eucharist theology, but he faced opposition from England's leading traditional theologian, Gardiner. Gardiner remained faithful to the traditional doctrine of transubstantiation, while Cranmer was formulating a Spiritual Presence theology. This book analyzes the debate, asking how both Cranmer and Gardiner arrived at opposing theologies despite being involved similarly in English religion and politics. To answer the question, the book examines each author's use of scripture, continental Reformers, and early Church Fathers.The book also argues that the personal and political context surrounding the two men shaped the nature of the theological debate. While trying to push Edward VI's England toward greater Reformation, Cranmer faced continued opposition from Gardiner who was imprisoned throughout Edward's reign. Gardiner sought release from prison and a return to authority, while Cranmer sought validation for his new theology and its associated legislation. To counter Gardiner's challenge, Cranmer had to create a clear Eucharistic theology. This political and personal climate therefore forced Cranmer to create England's Spiritual Presence theology by 1552 that was adopted in the 1558 Elizabethan Settlement and Anglican Church. It was this debate that set Anglicanism for England.

With a focus on England from the accession of Elizabeth I to the mid-1620s, this book examines the practice of direct, scholarly disputation between fundamentally opposing and oftentimes antagonistic Catholic, Protestant and nonconformist puritan divines. Introducing a form of discourse hitherto neglected in studies of religious controversy, the volume works to rehabilitate a body of material only previously examined as part of the great, subjective mass of polemic produced in the wake of the Reformation. In so doing, it argues that public religious disputation - debate between opposing clergymen, arranged according to strict academic formulae - can offer new insights into contemporary beliefs, thought processes and conceptions of religious identity, as well as an accessible and dramatic window into the major theological controversies of the age. Formal disputation crossed confessional lines, and here provides an opportunity for a broad, comparative analysis. More than any other type of interaction or material, these encounters - and the dialogic accounts they produced - displayed the shared methods underpinning religious divisions, allowing Catholic and reformed clergymen to meet on the same field. The present volume asserts the significance of public religious disputation (and accounts thereof) in this regard, and explores their use of formal logic, academic procedure and recorded dialogue form to bolster religious controversy. In this, it further demonstrates how we might begin to move from the surviving source material for these encounters to the events themselves, and how the disputations then offer a remarkable new glimpse into the construction, rationalization and expression of post-Reformation religious argument.

Öffentlich ausgetragene Debatten gehören zu den Grundmerkmalen moderner Gesellschaften. Eine entwickelte »demokratische Streitkultur« gilt mithin geradezu als Voraussetzung für das Funktionieren einer Demokratie. Die dieser Wahrnehmung oft implizit zu Grunde liegende These vom »Strukturwandel der Öffentlichkeit« ist in den letzten Jahrzehnten von Seiten der Geschichtswissenschaft verschiedentlich relativiert worden.Was hatten diese unterschiedlichen Formen des öffentlich ausgetragenen Streits gemeinsam? Inwieweit prägten und strukturierten sie die jeweilige(n) historische(n) Öffentlichkeit(en)? Wie wurde das Phänomen des Streits von den Zeitgenossen jeweils wahrgenommen und bewertet? Lassen sich diesbezüglich signifikante Unterschiede zur Zeit der frühen Reformation oder der Frühaufklärung konstatieren? Gab es so etwas wie eine spezifische Streitkultur des konfessionellen Zeitalters?