Ronald K Rittgers

Biographic Data

ID973400
NAMERonald K Rittgers
GIVEN NAMESRonald K
FAMILY NAMERittgers
SIGNATURERITTGERS R K
AFFILIATIONSValparaiso University
VERIFIEDNo
TOTAL WORKS16
TOTAL CITATIONS2
WORKS AS AUTHOR16
WORKS AS EDITOR0
FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR2004
LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR2025
H-INDEX1

  • Scripture as ‘Sacrament’ in Early Modern Evangelical Church Ordinances

    Ronald K RittgersARTICLEReformation & Renaissance Review2025References: 25

    This article seeks to contribute to the growing body of scholarly literature that challenges the Weberian disenchantment thesis and its assumptions about the role of the Protestant Reformation in shaping the modern world. It does so by interacting with scholarship that has identified a distinctively Protestant version of enchantment associated with the Word. Drawing on an unlikely and heretofore untapped source to support and expand such scholars…

  • A Liturgy of Lament for a Broken House-Church

    Ronald K RittgersARTICLEReformation & Renaissance Review2023

    This article explores the evolving nature of affectivity in the long Reformation, focusing especially on the place of lament in the ‘emotion script’ of early modern Lutheranism. It examines this script by introducing readers to an extremely rich and previously unknown ego-document or ‘Selbstzeugnis’ from early seventeenth-century Nürnberg: Johann Christoph Oelhafen's ‘Pious Meditations on the, Alas, Most Sorrowful Bereavement’. The article argues…

  • The Personal Luther

    Ronald K RittgersARTICLESixteenth Century Journal2018

  • The Word-Prophet Martin Luther

    Ronald K RittgersARTICLESixteenth Century Journal2017

  • The Age of Reform as an Age of Consolation

    Open AccessRonald K RittgersARTICLEChurch History2017Cited by: 2References: 39

    This article seeks to provide a new way of interpreting the Age of Reform and its legacy on the occasion of the Protestant Reformation's 500th anniversary. Over the past several decades, many scholars have interpreted the Age of Reform through the lens of a "Discipline Paradigm." They have stressed the centrality of social and moral discipline in the Age of Reform and its legacy for the modern world. This paradigm has inspired much important and …

  • The Suffering Body in Sixteenth-Century Lutheran Devotional Literature1

    Ronald K RittgersARTICLEPast & Present2017

    One of the central yet under-studied goals of Lutheran reformers was to change in dramatic fashion the way their contemporaries understood and sought to cope with the suffering that was so much part of early modern existence. According to the reformers, many of the traditional ways of approaching suffering were essentially pagan in origin, because they either relied on ‘superstitious’ means of manipulating God, or they attempted to barter with Go…

  • The Early Luther

    Open AccessRonald K RittgersARTICLETheology Today2015

  • The Search for Authority in Reformation Europe

    Open AccessRonald K RittgersARTICLERenaissance Quarterly2015

    The Search for Authority in Reformation Europe. Helen Parish, Elaine Fulton, and Peter Webster, eds. St. Andrews Studies in Reformation History. Farnham: Ashgate Publishing Limited, 2014. viii + 206 pp. $119.95. - Volume 68 Issue 1

  • The Early Reformation in Germany

    Ronald K RittgersARTICLEGerman History2014

    Tom Scott, Honorary Professor in the School of History at the University of St Andrews, is the author of numerous influential works on the social, economic and political history of late medieval and early modern Germany. He has immeasurably enriched the field of German Reformation Studies through his research on the peasantry and the Peasants’ War, town-country relations, Radical Reformers such as Thomas Müntzer, and German regionalism—his knowle…

  • The Reformation of Suffering

    Ronald K RittgersBOOKThe reformation of suffering2012

    "Focusing especially on Wittenberg Christianity, The reformation of suffering examines the genesis of Protestant doctrines of suffering among the leading reformers, traces the transmission of these doctrines from the reformers to the common clergy, and examines the reception of these ideas by laypeople. Rittgers underscores the importance of consolation in early modern Protestantism and seeks to challenge a scholarly trend that has emphasized the…

  • Grief and Consolation in Early Modern Lutheran Devotion

    Open AccessRonald K RittgersARTICLEChurch History2012References: 13

    This article seeks to make an original contribution to the study of early modern Christian devotion by examining a source that has received no scholarly attention of any kind: Johannes Christoph Oelhafen'sPious Meditations on the Most Sorrowful Bereavement(1619). Oelhafen, a prominent Nuremberg lawyer, composed thePious Meditationsshortly after his wife, Anna Maria, died. He did so in order to console himself and his eight children in the midst o…

  • The Reformation of the Keys

    Open AccessRonald K RittgersBOOKReformation of the Keys2009

  • Metapher und Kreuz. Studien zu Luthers Christusbild

    Ronald K RittgersARTICLESixteenth Century Journal2008

  • Private Confession and the Lutheranization of Sixteenth-Century Nördlingen

    Ronald K RittgersARTICLESixteenth Century Journal2005

    This article seeks to contribute to the scholarly literature on confessionalization by showing how private confession served as an important marker of official confessional identity in the German Reformation. The discussion focuses on Nordlingen, a Swabian imperial city that has received very little attention from English-speaking Reformation scholars. The article begins with a discussion of the efforts of Kaspar Loner, the city's senior pastor, …

  • The Reformation of the Keys

    Open AccessRonald K RittgersBOOKReformation of the Keys2004

    Unlike other Protestants, Lutherans chose not to abolish private confession but to change it to suit their theological convictions and social needs. Here, Rittgers traces the development of Lutheran private confession, demonstrating how it consistently balanced competing concerns for spiritual freedom and moral discipline.

  • The Merchant in the Confessional

    Ronald K RittgersARTICLESixteenth Century Journal2004