My research focusses on the long-term impact of the Protestant and Catholic Reformations on German society and culture. A distinctive element of my approach has been the incorporation of visual evidence into the broader frameworks of religious history. The Cult of the Virgin Mary in Early Modern Germany: Protestant and Catholic Piety, 1500-1648 drew on both textual and visual sources to analyse the significance of Marian piety during the Reformation and Counter-Reformation. A Magnificent Faith: Art and Identity in Lutheran Germany explains how and why Lutheranism—a confession that insisted upon the pre-eminence of God’s Word—became a visually magnificent faith, a faith whose adherents produced, during the eighteenth century, monuments as splendid as the Frauenkirche in Dresden. I am currently writing a study of religious life during the Thirty Years War (1618-1648) that draws on evidence from Electoral Saxony, one of the Empire’s most important Protestant territories, to examine the role of faith in an era of violence and suffering. Some preliminary results of this project can be found in German History and the Journal of Ecclesiastical History.

See also the St Andrews Reformation Studies Institute

Faith and Survival: A Religious History of the Thirty Years War.

Reformation; early modern Germany; visual culture; Thirty Years War.