Peter Martyr Vermigli's Preces sacrae (1564) and the Problem of Prayers as Historical Sources
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Authors
Publication Date
2017-05-04Journal Title
Reformation and Renaissance Review
ISSN
1462-2459
Publisher
Informa UK Limited
Volume
19
Pages
87-103
Language
English
Type
Article
This Version
AM
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Aspray, S. (2017). Peter Martyr Vermigli's Preces sacrae (1564) and the Problem of Prayers as Historical Sources. Reformation and Renaissance Review, 19 87-103. https://doi.org/10.1080/14622459.2017.1311123
Abstract
This article combines a study of Peter Martyr Vermigli’s $\textit{Sacred Prayers}$ with a methodological concern for the particular challenges involved in coming to grips with prayers as historical sources. It demonstrates that in the reception history of Vermigli’s prayers there has been a recurring tendency to read them as something other than prayers, a commentary on the Psalms for instance. By contrast, this article attends to the specificity of their genre and form as prayers. This approach leads, first, to a fresh appreciation of the $\textit{Preces sacrae}$ as a rare and revealing source of their kind, since not many prayers offered before lectures in sixteenth-century Protestant universities have survived; secondly, to the discovery of important, as yet unknown connections between Vermigli’s $\textit{Preces sacrae}$ and Wolfgang Capito’s $\textit{Precationes}$; and thirdly to an understanding of the spiritual depth of the $\textit{Preces sacrae}$ going beyond their propositional theological content.
Sponsorship
This work was supported by the Schweizerischer Nationalfonds zur Förderung der Wissenschaftlichen Forschung [P1SKP1_168336].
Identifiers
External DOI: https://doi.org/10.1080/14622459.2017.1311123
This record's URL: https://www.repository.cam.ac.uk/handle/1810/264693
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