Natal’ya Aleksandrovna Berezhnaya phd in history, senior lecturer, Saint-Petersburg State University,Institute of History, (5 Mendeleevskaya liniya, Saint-Petersburg, Russia, 199034)
n.berezhnaya@spbu.ru, natalialandi@mail.ru
Berezhnaya Ν. Α. Biblical Stories in the Funeral Sermons of the Electors of the Palatinate of the second half of the 16th century, Religiya. Tserkov’. Obshchestvo. Issledovaniya i publikatsii po teologii i religii [Religion. Church. Society: Research and publications in the field of theology and religious studies], Saint-Petersburg, 2023, vol. 12, pp. 128–155.
doi: 10.24412/2308-0698-2023-12-128-155
Language: Russian
The 16–17th centuries are rightly considered the heyday of the genre of funeral sermons in Germany, although the tradition of reading the «Funeral Oration» existed back in the Middle Ages. Funeral sermons were of particular importance in the evangelical tradition: they emphasized the fidelity of the deceased to the «true Christian doctrine» and the triumph of the Gospel in the principality, and also played the role of additional teaching aids — in theology, grammar, history. Since the sermon was the main element of these texts, it is necessary to consider which biblical stories and which biblical heroes were emphasized by Protestant theologians in constructing the images of their princes.
The article analyzes what ideas the individual stories were meant to illustrate, what the theologians’ motives were — and, eventually, whether there were differences in the choice of Bible stories between Lutheran and Calvinist funeral sermons. The Palatinate funeral sermons are representative because in the second half of the 16th century in the Electorate of the Palatinate the «official» creed changed several times from Evangelical to Reformed. This gives us the opportunity to study both emerging memorial traditions.
Key words: biblical subjects, funeral sermons, electors of the Palatinate, evangelical doctrine, Reformed doctrine
URL: //rcs-almanac.ru/en/en-bereghnaja-2023/
