The 'problem of authority' was not an invention of the Protestant Reformation, but, as the essays contained in this volume demonstrate, its discussion, in ever greater complexity, was one of the ramifications (if not causes) of the deepening divisions within the Christian church in the sixteenth century. Any optimism that the principle of sola scriptura might provide a vehicle for unity and concord in the post-Reformation church was soon to be dented by a growing uncertainty and division, evident even in early evangelical writing and preaching. Representing a new approach to an important subject this volume of essays widens the understanding and interpretation of authority in the debates of the Reformation. The fruits of original and recent research, each essay builds with careful scholarship on solid historiographical foundations, ensuring that the content and ultimate conclusions do much to challenge long-standing assumptions about perceptions of authority in the aftermath of the Reformation. Rather than dealing with individual sources of authority in isolation, the volume examines the juxtapositions of and negotiations between elements of the authoritative synthesis, and thereby throws new light on the nature of authority in early-modern Europe as a whole. This volume is thus an ideal vehicle with which to bring high quality, new, and significant research into the public domain for the first time, whilst adding substantially to the existing corpus of Reformation scholarship.

Between the later middle ages and the eighteenth century, religious orders were in the vanguard of reform movements within the Christian church. Recent scholarship on medieval Europe has emphasised how mendicants exercised a significant influence on the religiosity of the laity by actually shaping their spirituality and piety. In a similar way for the early modern period, religious orders have been credited with disseminating Tridentine reform, training new clergy, gaining new converts and bringing those who had strayed back into the fold. Much about this process, however, still remains unknown, particularly with regards to east central Europe. Exploring the complex relationship between western monasticism and lay society in east central Europe across a broad chronological timeframe, this collection provides a re-examination of the level and nature of interaction between members of religious orders and the communities around them. That the studies in this collection are all located in east central Europe - Transylvania, Hungary, Austria, and Bohemia- fulfils a second key aim of the volume: the examination of clerical and lay piety in a region of Europe almost entirely ignored by western scholarship. As such the volume provides an important addition to current scholarship, showcasing fresh research on a subject and region on which little has been published in English. The volume further contributes to the reintegration of eastern and western European history, expanding the existing parameters of scholarly discourse into late medieval and early modern religious practice and piety.

Dr Georg Eder was an extraordinary figure who rose from humble origins to hold a number of high positions at Vienna University and the city's Habsburg court between 1552 and 1584. His increasingly uncompromising Catholicism eventually placed him at odds, however, with many influential figures around him, not least the confessionally moderate Habsburg Emperor, Maximillian II. Pivoting around a dramatic incident in 1573, when Eder's ferocious anti-Lutheran polemic, the Evangelical Inquisition, fell under sharp Imperial condemnation, this book investigates three key aspects of his career. It examines Eder's position as a Catholic in the predominantly Protestant Vienna of his day; the public expression of Eder's Catholicism and the strong Jesuit influence on the same; and Eder's rescue and subsequent survival as a lay advocate of Catholic reform, largely through the alternative protection of the Habsburgs' rivals, the Wittelsbach Dukes of Bavaria. Based on a wide variety of printed and manuscript material, this study contributes to existing historiography by reconstructing the career of one of late sixteenth-century Vienna's most prominent figures. In a broader sense it also adds significantly to the wider canon of Reformation history by re-examining the nature and extent of Catholicism at the Viennese court in the latter half of the sixteenth century. It concludes by emphasising the importance of influential laity such as Eder in advancing the cause of Catholic reform, and challenges the prevalent portrayal of the sixteenth-century Catholic laity as an anonymous and largely passive group who merely responded to the ministries of others.