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Corpora doctrinae (collections of teaching) are proclamations or collections of creeds and confessions. These corpora, which included ancient and modern statements, some of which were local and others that were accepted more universally, together document the continuity of confession and functioned to safeguard the confessional status of various territories and cities in eastern, central, and northern Germany between 1560 and 1580. Preliminary stages are the Doctrinalia and teaching rules in the church orders from 1535. The idea of corpus doctrinae comes from P. Melanchtho…

The syncretistic controversy was the longest and last theological debate in the so-called confessional period (Catholic Reform and Counterreformation 1.2). In it, doctrinal views traceable to Philipp Melanchthon (1497–1560, positions polemically labeled Philippism or crypto-Calvinism), coupled with the attempt to search for the truth held in ¶ common by all three Christian churches in order to arrive at a fundamental minimum common ground, collided with a strict Lutheranism that was faithful to the Formula of Concord, uncompromising in defen…