Philip Melanchthon, Johannes Brenz and the Augsburg Interim
James M Estes2022
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Abstract
A long list of German Protestant Reformers had their lives disrupted and their careers threatened by the so-called Augsburg Interim (1548-52), Emperor Charles V's attmept to restore religious unity to Germany by the forceful imposition of a slightly modified versionof Catholicism on the cities and principalities that had adhered to the Reformation. This essay focuses on the role of Johannes Brenz in the passive resistance to the Interim and its effective subversion in the duchy of Württemerg. But in so doing it compares and contrasts Brenz's experience in Württemberg with the significantly different experience of his friend, Philip Melanchthon, in Saxony.
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