Books in the Religious Cultures in the Early Modern World series

Indulgences have been synonymous with corruption in the Catholic Church ever since Martin Luther nailed his ninety-five theses to the church door in Wittenberg in 1517. Tingle explores the nature and evolution of indulgences in the Counter Reformation and how they were used as a powerful tool of personal and institutional reform.

Challenging accepted notions of Elizabethan foreign policy, Gehring argues that the Queen's relationship with the Protestant princes of the Holy Roman Empire was more of a success than has been previously thought.

Conversion was a central feature of the Counter-Reformation. Powerful tools of propaganda, converts lived simultaneously at the centre and on the periphery of the societies they joined. Mazur combines an analysis of ecclesiastical institutions and methods of conversion used by the Catholic clergy in early modern Italy with fascinating case studies.

Missionaries who travelled to the New World in the 17th century encountered an array of cults and rituals. Catholics and Calvinists were united in viewing this idolatry as superstitious. Balleriaux presents a study of French, Spanish and English missions to the Americas, based on a comparative analysis of the goals expressed in their writings.

Using evidence from contemporary printed images, Smith examines the attitudes of Christian Europe to the Ottoman Empire and to Islam. She also considers the relationship between text and image, placing it in the cultural context of the Reformation and beyond.

Hillman presents a fascinating account of the role that women played during the Catholic Reformation in France. She reconstructs the devotional practices of a network of powerful women showing how they reconciled Catholic piety with their roles as part of an aristocratic elite, challenging the view that the Catholic Reformation was a male concern.

Loades explores England's religious cultures during the reign of Mary Tudor. He investigates how conflicting traditions of conformity and dissent negotiated the new spiritual, political and legal landscape which followed her reintroduction of Catholicism to England.

A study of the production, circulation and consumption of English ghost stories during the Age of Reason. This work examines a variety of mediums: ballads and chapbooks, newspapers, sermons, medical treatises and scientific journals, novels and plays. It relates the telling of ghost stories to changes associated with the Enlightenment.

Despite the best efforts of the English government, Elizabethan Ireland remained resolutely Catholic. Hutchinson examines this 'failure' of the Protestant Reformation. He argues that the emerging political concept of the absolutist state forms a crucial link between English policy in Ireland and the aims of the Calvinist reformers.

Focusing on the life and work of the evangelical reformer John Bale (1485-1563), Wort presents a study of conversion in the sixteenth century.

Notions of religious conformity in England were redefined during the mid-seventeenth century; for many it was as though the previous century's reformation was being reversed. Lane considers how a select group of churchmen - the Laudians - reshaped the meaning of church conformity during a period of religious and political turmoil.

This study looks at the way the Church utilized the belief in angels to enforce new and evolving doctrine.Angels were used by clergymen of all denominations to support their particular dogma. Sangha examines these various stances and applies the role of angel-belief further, to issues of wider cultural and political significance.

Before the mid-fifteenth century, the Christian and Islamic governments of Europe had restricted the architecture and design of synagogues and often prevented Jews from becoming architects. Stiefel presents a study of the material culture and religious architecture that this era produced.

Moger's study explores the personal experience of those who found themselves on the 'losing side' of the Reformation. Using the private diary of Catholic priest, Wolfgang Konigstein, Moger discusses the early years of Protestantism and its effects on the lives of German Catholics.

The dissolution of the monasteries in England during the 1530s began a turbulent period of religious restructuring. Focusing on the counties of Wiltshire and Cheshire, Guinn-Chipman looks at the changing nature of religion over the next two centuries.

Celestial phenomena were often harnessed for use by clerics in early modern Germany. Kurihara examines how and why interest in these events grew in this period, how the clergy exploited these beliefs and the role of sectarianism in Germany at this time.