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Martin Christ receives 2022 Ecclesiastical History Society Book Award           

Dr Martin Christ of the “Religion and Urbanity” research group has received the 2022 Ecclesiastical History Society Book Award for first monograph. The award was bestowed on Christ’s “Biographies of a Reformation: Religious Change and Confessional Coexistence in Upper Lusatia, 1520-1635”, published with Oxford University Press in 2021. Its the third book award for Christ, who is a Junior Fellow with the UrbRel group since 2018. He shares the award with Zachary Guiliano’s “The Homiliary of Paul the Deacon”.

As Alec Ryrie commented in his laudatory speech

Martin Christ’s Biographies of a Reformation is a well written monograph making extensive use of archival material. It advances a  carefully constructed thesis on the complexities of religious settlement and co-existence on periphery and how Catholic kings tolerated forms of Protestantism, and challenges the general thesis of top-down imposition through a biographical approach to local records. The phenomenon of confessional co-existence in places such as Upper Lusatia is known to scholars but has generally been treated as a curiosity or aberration. This book makes a serious case that these examples are much more significant to our understanding of how ‘Reformation’ processes were actually implemented, and by a bold application of the controversial concept of ‘syncretism’ to intra-Christian religious negotiations marks a definite advance in our understanding. And in the process it puts Upper Lusatia firmly on the map of Reformation studies.”

Alec Ryrie

“Biographies of a Reformation” is based on Christ’s doctoral dissertation but aspects of his current work in Erfurt also found their way into it.

Further Information

Martin Christ receives Reforc Book Award

Homepage of UrbRel research group

Ecclesiastical History Society Homepage

“Biographies of a Reformation” at Oxford University Press

EHS shortlist 2022

OpenEdition suggests that you cite this post as follows:
urbrel (January 26, 2023). Martin Christ receives 2022 Ecclesiastical History Society Book Award           . Religion and Urbanity: Reciprocal Formations. Retrieved March 19, 2025 from https://doi.org/10.58079/v3fq


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