Episcopacy, Authority, and Gender: Aspects of Religious Leadership in Europe, 1100–2000

by Jan Wim Buisman (Editor), Marjet Derks (Editor), Peter Raedts (Editor)

What is the base of religious leadership and how has it changed over the centuries? This volume presents a range of actors, both men and women, who, in a variety of historical contexts, claimed to be the living voices or intermediaries of God. The essays analyse the foundation of their authoritative claims and ask how and how far they succeeded in securing obedience from the Christians to whom they addressed their message. Religious authority is not understood as a monolithic entity but as something derived from many sources and claims. Whatever the national background, whether ordained or supposedly appointed through divine intervention, the histories of the people portrayed underline the long-term manifestations and multifaceted nature of Christian identity.

252 pages, Hardcover

First published October 19, 2015

About the author

Dr. Jan Wim Buisman is senior lecturer of the History of Christianity, with a special focus on the early modern period. He teaches bachelor and master courses on Medieval and Reformation Christianity. Moreover, he is Book Review Editor of Church History and Religious Culture.

Jan Wim Buisman studied modern history in Leiden and Paris. Subsequently, he obtained his Ph.D. from Leiden University in 1993, with an interdisciplinary dissertation on the social influence of Enlightened ideas in the Dutch Republic (Tussen vroomheid en Verlichting, 2 vols., Zwolle 1992).

He is particularly interested in the impact of natural disasters on religious mentalities. His current research entails a broad study of the history of the introduction of Benjamin Franklin’s lightning-rod in Europe and its important consequences for the perception of thunderstorms on a cultural, technical, ethnological, and religious level.

During recent years, a further research interest was collective biography. As a Secretary-in-chief of the Editorial Board of the Biografisch Lexicon voor de Geschiedenis van het Nederlandse Protestantisme he produced the 6th volume of this work of reference (Kampen 2006). From 2007 till 2009, he was a part-time senior lecturer of historical criminology at VU University Amsterdam.