This book describes the education and ministry of the Reformed ministers who served the church of Basel in the century after the city’s official adoption of the Reformation. It argues that growing homogeneity in social and geographical background and in amount of education was countered by a significant evolution in the content of that education, resulting in four distinct generations of clergy. These generational differences in turn influenced the preaching and pastoral care of the city-republic’s parish pastors. The evolution of the curriculum of the city’s university, especially the teachin ... More

This book describes the education and ministry of the Reformed ministers who served the church of Basel in the century after the city’s official adoption of the Reformation. It argues that growing homogeneity in social and geographical background and in amount of education was countered by a significant evolution in the content of that education, resulting in four distinct generations of clergy. These generational differences in turn influenced the preaching and pastoral care of the city-republic’s parish pastors. The evolution of the curriculum of the city’s university, especially the teaching of dialectic, contributed to the development of Reformed Orthodoxy in the theology faculty. Each generation of Basel’s pastors sought to inculcate a somewhat different understanding of the evangelical faith in their parishioners through their sermons, catechisms, and administration of the sacraments, moving from a general evangelical piety and rejection of late medieval Catholicism in the wake of the Reformation to a more self-conscious Reformed identity and the development of a Reformed religious culture. Over the last two decades of the 16th century, the church’s institutions for supervision of the clergy were strengthened, while the city magistrate and lay officials worked more closely with the clergy to oversee and enforce official standards of belief and conduct. Beginning with the third and fourth generations, it is possible to see the visible impact of both confessionalization and the professionalization of the clergy on popular religion.