how secular = ranke treatment of ref

Question 1

his treatment of the Reformation possesses neither

Answer 1

religious nor irreligious leanings

Question 2

Even in moments where Ranke inclines towards Protestantism, implied by his enthusiasm for leading Protestant reformers such as Luther, Ranke consistently

Answer 2

writes objectively without personal acclamation

Question 3

he can be claimed a secular historian, narrating religious histories without personal or moral affiliations, focusing fundamentally on empirical evidence from both

Answer 3

the Catholic and Protestant sides

Question 4

Yet Ranke communicates a sense of the ideas of God and his moving presence within the decline of

Answer 4

universal powers and the growth of Protestantism

Question 5

Ranke commits to ‘what really happened’ based on his religious belief that the historian can only

Answer 5

sense God in the actual world, including events, which bear the presence and ideas of God, and in this vein Ranke’s motive for the Reformation, both as a historical writing and event, deviate from secularism

Question 6

Both within his empirical narrative and motivations of The History of the Reformation of Germany, Protestantism emerges as a fundamental

Answer 6

thought to his retelling of history, as seen in his tenable appreciation of Luther and Protestant developments

Question 7

Yet his treatment of the Reformation is largely impartial and neither religion nor irreligious in narrative voice, and thus his History of the Reformation becomes a more

Answer 7

secular rhetoric, inspired by the religious movement ‘which most attracted him’ .

Question 8

Ranke’s disengagement with either a religious or irreligious perspective with the Reformation can deem him somewhat secular…
‘instruct the present for the benefit of future ages’

Answer 8

‘how things really were’

Question 9

Ranke, ‘like a skilful

Answer 9

physician
Introduction to the History of the Reformation in Germany, Johnson
enjoyed a high degree of aloofness and detachment of mind in his treatment of the Reformation

Question 10

In reflecting on the Lutheran contest with the papacy in Germany, Ranke simply reports the details of the event, discovered by

Answer 10

empiricism, and expressed in an objective way that strips back empirical sources to the principal events of the time.

Question 11

He recounts ‘the tumultuous rising of the lowest classes of the people, who, not content with reforms in the creed, ran emancipation from the see of Rome…. i.e., the complete overthrow of Church and State’.

Answer 11

State’. Considering his Protestant loyalties Ranke ought to have felt warmly towards such a concept, or at least towards the prospect of Lutheranism as a large Protestant sect penetrating Germany in the 14th century, yet he resists to providing even a word of personal opinion or evaluation in response to the changing religious dynamic in Germany.

Question 12

Ranke refers to Luther as being

Answer 12

in a truly heroic state of mind’
justifies ‘he accordingly set out on his way, regardless of the pope’s excommunication or the emperor’s ban’. This is an example of his objectivity which is often clouded in its figurative nature;

Question 13

In moments when Ranke does provide judgements or commentaries of the reformation, he most often does so through the voice of a

Answer 13

contemporary

Question 14

contemporary commentary on the Diffusion of the New Doctrines

Answer 14

he quotes the Swiss Protestant theologian Oswold Myconius who argued that the ‘Christian Church is a spiritual hidden body, and not of this world, it follows that this body cannot have a worldly, outward and visible head’

Question 15

In criticising the papacy, arguably something which Ranke ought to have felt passionately about, he abstains from any personal religious or irreligious view as uses Myconius’ commentary

Answer 15

‘that the Christian Church can acknowledge a head so spotted with sin as the pope’
Despite his potential agreement with Myconius Ranke maintains a personal detachment which makes his histories exempt from any religious or irreligious leanings

Question 16

Ranke describes the ‘pernicious’ nature of Johannes Oecoloampadius who was a leading German Protestant reformer and theologian in the early 16th century

Answer 16

‘read the mass only on Sundays, omitting the elevation of the host, and used none but the German language’

Question 17

Ranke gives some attention to the ‘well-intentioned’ Catholic Pope Adrian VI
but whom agrees w ranke’s view of Rome

Answer 17

We are aware that, some years ago, many abominations took place in this chair: everything was turned to evil, and the corruption spread from the head to the members, from the pope to the prelates’

Question 18

, it is interesting that Ranke gives Adrian VI the Catholic voice, being reformist in nature as he

Answer 18

‘zealously reproved the arrogance of the priesthood, and the waste and misapplication of church property’

Question 19

Ranke uses both Protestant and Catholic judgements of the Reformation, and he is thus unbiased in his histories, and accurate in recounting the Reformation ‘how it really was’ from ? sides

Answer 19

both

Question 20

Despite Ranke’s rejection of Hegelian notions that historical events, such as the Reformation, can be explained in entirely rational terms, he fails to be entirely secular as he claims

Answer 20

every epoch is immediate to God’

Question 21

Q on god omniscience

Answer 21

‘Only God knows world history. We perceive only its contradictions’

Question 22

philos criticisms: In his chapter on the Relation Of Papacy To Religion, Ranke stresses the

Answer 22

Council of Trent ‘which adhered to Catholicism… to itself produce Protestantism by a reaction’
Ranke assured ‘this was absolutely necessary’
not just for the Reformations sake, which could be viewed as objective, but also for the ‘necessity to clear the germ of religion from the thousand folds of accidental forms under which it lay concealed, and to place it unencumbered to the light of day’.

Question 23

religious op on germ

Answer 23

necessity to clear the germ of religion from the thousand folds of accidental forms under which it lay concealed, and to place it unencumbered to the light of day

Question 24

He even goes as far to advise that

Answer 24

Before the Gospel could be preached to all nations, it must appear again in its own lucid, unadulterated purity’

Question 25

religious? he believes in a form of the Gospel which is

Answer 25

‘lucid’ and pure and must ‘restore the purity of revelation’
Ranke implies that Germany was superior to ‘other nations who busied in the conquests of distant lands’ because it ‘undertook this might task’

Question 26

Whilst the corrupted nature of the Papacy in the 14th century is factual and acted as a driving force for the Reformation, it is Ranke who stresses the ? for Protestantism

Answer 26

‘absolute necessity’

Question 27

He explicitly denotes Reformation success to the

Answer 27

‘strenuous opposition to the See of Rome’, which Ranke as a Protestant favoured

Question 28

consv ref

Answer 28

‘solidity and beneficence of the established order as it had grown historically’

Question 29

appreciation of the removal of corrupted Catholic values.

Answer 29

‘there is nothing in the history of these times more remarkable than the degree of the synod which Lambert Phillip of Hessen and his dominions’

Question 30

Protestant reformer Francis Lambert suggested that the ‘choice of spiritual leaders’ would rely upon ‘he who preached the genuine word of God’ in the reformed church; Ranke viewed this as

Answer 30

‘remarkable’
also… outlines the ‘ideas’ of Lambert’s ‘scheme of church’ which include the ‘assembling of the Church every year in a general synod, represented by bishops and deputies, where all complaints should be heard and doubts resolved’. He again uses his ideas, which ‘had been deeply imbued with evangelical doctrines in the school of Luther’

Question 31

Ranke came from a devout family of Lutheran pastors and lawyers; and learned

Answer 31

‘Lutheran pietist theology which enabled him to see what he declared his vision to be’ at Leipzig

Question 32

Prot … ‘the same which the ‘French, Scotch, and American churches were afterwards founded’

Answer 32

by which ‘their historical importance is beyond all calculation’

Question 33

description of ‘the society of the Bohemian brethren’ as ‘remarkable’ in Book II, of whom

Answer 33

exhibited to the world a Christian community in all the purity and simplicity of the primitive church’ supports the claim that Ranke encourages the Reformation to a certain degree

Question 34

metaphysical

Answer 34

‘filling in the gaps’ of fact - theological?
. Ranke acknowledges the ‘pure love of truth’ but this does not come without the ‘higher reality’ – and this is when Ranke’s epistemology and empiricism converge and become ‘spiritual unities’.

Question 35

wrote the History of the Reformation acknowledging its

Answer 35

divine importance

Question 36

REF as

Answer 36

an ‘institution’ among ‘states and nations’ as ‘meaningful units’, to the ‘expressions of the will of God’ make his histories a somewhat religious mission

Question 37

Ranke’s History of the Reformation in Germany becomes a

Answer 37

‘spiritual apperception’ by which the outward appearance of the Reformation’s events, persons and institutions possess a totality – an integrated, spiritual reality which ‘only God knows’

Question 38

Ranke treats the Reformation ultimately as a religious and political development which requires contemporaries to break down the attitudes of the time,

Answer 38

yet the language of the narrative gains far more energy when describing those in favour of Protestant developments, such as Luther and Myconius

Question 39

Whilst Ranke’s History of the Reformation was inspired by the religious movement ‘which most

Answer 39

attracted him’ , he treats the Reformation with objectivity and impartiality which makes his retelling of history a fundamentally secular rhetoric, with moments of Romantic and Christian intimations which only determines the nature of the Reformation itself