The true citizens of the city of God: the cult of saints, the Catholic social order, and the urban Reformation in Germany
@article{Pfaff2013TheTC, title={The true citizens of the city of God: the cult of saints, the Catholic social order, and the urban Reformation in Germany}, author={Steven Pfaff}, journal={Theory and Society}, year={2013}, volume={42}, pages={189-218} }
Historical scholarship suggests that a robust cult of the saints may have helped some European regions to resist inroads by Protestantism. Based on a neo-Durkheimian theory of rituals and social order, I propose that locally based cults of the saints that included public veneration lowered the odds that Protestantism would displace Catholicism in sixteenth-century German cities. To evaluate this proposition, I first turn to historical and theoretical reflection on the role of the cult of the…
8 Citations
Contexts of State Violence: Jewish Expulsions in the Holy Roman Empire
- HistorySocial Science History
- 2020
Abstract Policies excluding ethnoracial and religious minorities reinforce the power of political elites. This study addresses an extreme case of exclusion: urban expulsions of Jews in the medieval…
Saints Marching in, 1590–2012
- Political Science
- 2016
The Catholic Church has been making saints for centuries in the two‐stage process of beatification and canonization. We analyse determinants of numbers beatified and canonized (non‐martyrs) since…
Opening the Fifth Seal Catholic Martyrs and Forces of Religious Competition
- Political Science
- 2020
Since Pope John Paul II’s stock-taking of twentieth century martyrs, the Catholic Church has significantly increased the beatification and canonization of martyrs. Not only have the numbers of…
Religion and Persecution
- History
- 2021
This paper investigates the relationship between local religiosity and episodes of persecutions in a sample of over 2,100 European cities during 1100-1850. We introduce a novel proxy for measuring…
St Edmund versus St Francis? Saints and Religious Conflict in Medieval Bury St Edmunds
- History
- 2020
Between 1233 and 1258, Franciscan friars attempted to establish themselves in the town of Bury St Edmunds, which was jealously guarded by the Benedictine monks of St Edmunds abbey. In the ensuing…
Religious dominance and empathy
- Sociology
- 2020
Why do some religious authorities empathize with outsiders while others espouse xenophobia? This paper argues that church leaders are less likely to display empathy when their religious identity is…
Bibliographie internationale de Sociologie des Religions 2013/International Bibliography of Sociology of Religions 2013
- 2014
Les lecteurs de notre revue trouveront ci-dessous la bibliographie internationale de sociologie des religions pour l’année 2013. Nous rappelons que notre bibliographie ne couvre de façon systématique…
References
SHOWING 1-10 OF 96 REFERENCES
Structure and Dynamics of Religious Insurgency
- History
- 2012
The Protestant Reformation swept across Central Europe in the early-sixteenth century, leaving cities divided into Evangelical and Catholic camps as some instituted reforms and others remained loyal…
The Rationalization of Miracles: A New Institutional Environment
- History
- 2012
During the Counter-Reformation in southern Europe, Catholic Church officials developed rules to legitimize miracles performed by candidates to sainthood. The Rationalization of Miracles uncovers a…
Historicizing the secularization debate : Church, state, and society in late medieval and early modern Europe, ca. 1300 to 1700
- Philosophy
- 2000
In recent years, the sociology of religion has been consumed by a debate over secularization that pits advocates of a new, rational-choice paradigm (the so-called religious economies model) against…
The Disciplinary Revolution: Calvinism and the Rise of the State in Early Modern Europe
- History
- 2003
What explains the rapid growth of state power in early modern Europe? While most scholars have pointed to the impact of military or capitalist revolutions, Philip S. Gorski argues instead for the…
The Dutch Republic: Its Rise, Greatness, and Fall, 1477-1806
- History
- 1995
The 'Dutch Golden Age', the age of Grotius, Spinoza, Rembrandt, Vermeer, and a host of other renowned artists and writers was also remarkable for its immense impact in the spheres of commerce,…
The Marketplace of Christianity
- Economics
- 2006
This startlingly original (and sure to be controversial) account of the evolution of Christianity shows that the economics of religion has little to do with counting the money in the collection…
Saints Marching in, 1590-2009
- Economics
- 2011
The Catholic Church has been making saints for centuries, typically in a two-stage process featuring beatification and canonization. We analyze determinants of rates of beatification and canonization…
Saints and Society: The Two Worlds of Western Christendom, 1000-1700
- History
- 1982
In "Saints and Society," Donald Weinstein and Rudolph M. Bell examine the lives of 864 saints who lived between 1000 and 1700 and the perceptions of sanctity prevalent in late medieval and early…
Sacred Trust: The Medieval Church as an Economic Firm
- Economics, History
- 1996
The Church dominated society in the Middle Ages and functioned as a quasi-government, providing public and private goods. This book is the first to examine specific institutions in the Church in the…
A Critique of Lionel Rothkrug's List of Bavarian Pilgrimage Shrines
- History
- 1987
In an article entitled "Popular Religion and Holy Shrines" and again in his monograph Religious Practices and Collective Perceptions, Lionel Rothkrug argues that the number and distribution of…