Arts, Portraits and Representation in the Reformation Era: Proceedings of the Fourth Reformation Research Consortium Conference [1 ed.] 9783666552496, 9783525552490

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Patrizio Foresta / Federica Meloni (eds.)

Arts, Portraits and Representation in the Reformation Era Proceedings of the Fourth Reformation Research Consortium Conference Academic Studies

37

Refo500 Academic Studies Edited by Herman J. Selderhuis In Co-operation with Christopher B. Brown (Boston), Günter Frank (Bretten), Bruce Gordon (New Haven), Barbara Mahlmann-Bauer (Bern), Tarald Rasmussen (Oslo), Violet Soen (Leuven), Zsombor Tóth (Budapest), Günther Wassilowsky (Linz), Siegrid Westphal (Osnabrück).

Volume 37

Patrizio Foresta/Federica Meloni (eds.)

Arts, Portraits and Representation in the Reformation Era Proceedings of the Fourth Reformation Research Consortium Conference With 111 Figures

Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht

This volume has been printed with the contribution of Fondazione per le scienze religiose Giovanni XXIII.

Bibliographic information published by the Deutsche Nationalbibliothek: The Deutsche Nationalbibliothek lists this publication in the Deutsche Nationalbibliografie; detailed bibliographic data available online: http://dnb.de. © 2019, Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht GmbH & Co. KG, Theaterstraße 13, D-37073 Göttingen All rights reserved. No part of this work may be reproduced or utilized in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or any information storage and retrieval system, without prior written permission from the publisher. Typesetting: 3w+p, Rimpar Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht Verlage | www.vandenhoeck-ruprecht-verlage.com ISSN 2197-0165 ISBN 978-3-666-55249-6

Contents

Federica Meloni Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

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Images between traditional iconographics and new theological meanings Joanna Kaz´mierczak Who is who in God’s pasture: functions of the motif of the Good Shepherd in German prints in the first half of the 16th century . . . . . .

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Sílvia Canalda i Llobet and Cristina Fontcuberta i Famadas The Mystic Winepress: evolution, use and meaning of a controversial image at the time of the Reformation and Counter-Reformation . . . . .

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Magdalena Mielnik Delusive riches: allegorical representations of Gdan´sk in art at the end of the 16th and in the first half of the 17th century . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

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Aleksandra Jas´niewicz Two humanists in exile: neo-Stoic notions in the Gdan´sk portraits of Giovanni Bernardino Bonifacio, Marquis of Oria (1517–1597), and Martin Opitz (1597–1639) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

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Sibylla Goegebuer The role of St John’s Hospital religious community in Bruges in the 16thand 17th-century history of care. How did the tangible 17th-century art collection commissioned by St John’s Hospital represent the intangible history of caring for people? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

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Contents

Arts between political ambitions and confessional positions Tamara Dominici Erasmus of Rotterdam and Quentin Metsys: a reassessment . . . . . . . . 109 Insa Christiane Hennen The so-called ‘Reformation Altarpiece’ by the Cranach workshop and the restyling of the Wittenberg town church between 1500 and 1600 . . . . . 123 Aurelia Zdun´czyk Die Bedeutung der Bildnisse der sogenannten Wittenberger Gruppe für die Legitimierung und Institutionalisierung des Augsburger Bekenntnisses . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 131 Justyna Chodasewicz Zwischen Repräsentation und Glaubensbekenntnis. Die Grabanlagen der Familie von Schaffgotsch in Reußendorf und Greiffenberg . . . . . . . . . 143 Kathrin Ellwardt A church of free peasants and the semantics of representation: Lüdingworth in Land Hadeln . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 151 Marta Małkus and Anna Michalska Jews, Lutherans, Friars Minor: the image of ‘Infidels’ in the depiction of the Trial of Christ from Wschowa (Fraustadt) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 161 Rainer Kobe Konfessionalismus im Bild: Der Kupferstich „Der Papst im Lateran“ von Jan van Londerseel nach einem Gemälde von Hendrick Aerts . . . . . . . 173 William Dyrness Text and media: portraits and representation in Elizabethan England

. . 195

Maria Lucia Weigel Cultural transfers and shifts in meaning: Reformers’ portraits on English and German memorial sheets of the 18th and 19th centuries . . . . . . . . 213

Representations between identities, languages and figures Herman A. Speelman The Eucharist as a mysterious representation of Christ . . . . . . . . . . . 233

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Gábor Ittzés ‘Das die Seele oder Geyst der menschen / vnsterblich sey’: arguments for the immortality of the soul in later 16th-century German Lutheran theology . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 271 Patrizio Foresta This ‘society is an imitation and representation of the apostolic order’: the Jesuits and their self-understanding from Jerónimo Nadal to the Imago primi saeculi Societatis Jesu (16th–17th century) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 291 Volkmar Ortmann Reformation and nation: Karl Hase and Ferdinand Christian Baur on the Reformation as a typically German affair . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 303 Fabrizio Mandreoli Luther’s theology and the theological place of the Jews: thought-provoking relevance and connections in Erich Przywara’s theological proposal . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 317 Fabio Todesco Figura, allegory, and the role of the Reformation in Erich Auerbach’s historical perspectivism . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 335 Zsombor Tóth Greenblatt’s self-fashioning revisited: the problem(s) of representing a self in the Reformation era. Historical anthropological remarks . . . . . . 365 Illustrations

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 385

Index of persons . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 481 Index of biblical references . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 495

Federica Meloni

Introduction

The course of visual culture in the 15th century On the eve of the Reformation, there was talk of its being a time of ‘visual hyperfiguration’1 that permeated all aspects of daily life. This visual saturation was accentuated by certain devotional practices in which the image became the protagonist par excellence in the life of the community. Processions, theatrical representations at Easter, at Christmas, during Holy Week and in extraordinary situations, including sudden calamity, epidemics or upcoming battles, became privileged circumstances when visual instruments were used to nourish people’s religious sentiments.2 By the early sixteenth century, the figurative arts had reached a level of development that attracted the attention of a vast literary criticism, which from then until today has continued to fascinate the public on all levels, whether in public or in private. For devotional, celebratory, commemorative and pedagogical purposes, these arts were adopted in the decoration of mansions and churches in the form of frescoes, paintings, altarpieces, stained-glass windows, engravings and sculptures. The artistic creations were also applied to furnishings, monumental works and funeral accoutrements and employed as printed illustrations, miniatures in manuscripts and codices and the decoration of sacred jewellery. The numerous objects of art and ornamental elements were carried out using a multitude of techniques and materials, endowing them with a highly variable economic worth according to their destination and scope. The origins of this hyper-figuration are well known: at the end of the fifteenth century, art – in its broadest sense, i. e. functioning as a historical source – had undergone not only a quantitative transformation but also, first and foremost, a 1 François Boespflug, Le immagini di Dio. Una storia dell’Eterno nell’arte (Torino: Einaudi, 2012). 2 E. g. see Michele Bacci, ‘L’effige sacra e il suo spettatore’, in Castelnuovo, Enrico/Sergi, Giuseppe (ed.), Arti e storia nel Medioevo (4 vols.; Torino, Einaudi, 2002–4) vol. 3 (2004), 199–252.

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qualitative one. The progressive proliferation of figurative languages had, in fact, gone hand in hand with the emergence of new artistic achievements. These achievements would prove significant for understanding the degree of maturity in the theological reflection of the Reformers of the following century. The transformation of pictorial space was probably the most revolutionary sixteenthcentury innovation. The organisation of space in the previous century had followed a series of rules which imposed a symbolic subdivision that manifested itself in two ways: a horizontal axis, establishing an inferior and superior level to indicate the different degrees of the figure’s dignity, and a vertical one where arrangement to the right or left of the work’s main subject conferred roles and functions on the figures presented. At that time, with a rediscovered interest in physical reality, that pictorial space was designed based on its mathematical laws and materiality. Even the physical space of the place of worship followed and inspired these fifteenth-century organisational rules. The placement of artistic works occurred through precise hierarchical designs. For example, the aisles intended for the faithful were distinct from the apsidal space where – as the site of the celebration of worship – works of large dimensions were displayed, including crucifixes or frescoes that ran along the walls. The area behind the altar was also dedicated to drawing the worshippers’ attention inasmuch as this was the space where the eucharistic mystery took place. Here, the figurative works were integrated into the ritual, and each one became part of a specific moment during worship, thus acquiring a powerful visual impact, partly thanks to the use of wax candles that significantly enhanced the paintings or illuminated the objects. With the advent of perspective, pictorial art incorporated the three-dimensional quality of reality and created the trompe l’oeil effect that endows entire works with a powerfully illusionistic significance. An initial example that bears witness to the manner with which Brunelleschi’s rules of perspective were introduced can be found in The Holy Trinity, with the Virgin and Saint John and donors by Masaccio (fig. 3). Masaccio reinterpreted traditional iconography within an altered logic that dictates the rules of perspective imposed on the artist in the service of a canonical Trinitarian scene. In the process, he experimented with innovative solutions. Note the position of God the Father, who, in order to be similarly represented in the central, glorious position as if on the throne of divine grace, is placed above a balustrade. His body, no longer floating unrealistically in the heavens, is proportionate to the Son, who is held by the cross. This complex representation was itself a significant novelty in art at the time,3 one that demonstrates the manner in which the construction of three-dimensional space compelled the artist to bend traditional iconographies to fit new rules. These 3 Boespflug, Le immagini di Dio, 219–21.

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innovative standards included the sense of positioning on multiple generated spatial planes, new proportions to be respected and new techniques in the portrayal of objects, human beings and environments. Furthermore, the formation of new rules of perspective altered the spatial and mental relationship of the spectator and the work in the course of the sixteenth century. The space between the one and the other was widened, ‘the observer is pushed outside the representation’ in an act that is no longer ‘a mystical viewing, but rather an optical one’.4 This was accompanied by a clear shift of attention from the object to the subject; the spectator is excluded from the work of art, but repositioned where s/he enjoys a unique and personalised vantage point. This aforementioned exclusion also represented an achievement on a level comparable to what the individual reached in Renaissance culture, becoming him/ herself the measure of all things through his/her ingenuity, capable of reasoning and acting on nature and controlling it to his/her own advantage. Fifteenthcentury art is strongly affected by Renaissance influences, including the manner with which it appropriated and made use of an improved knowledge of medicine and anatomy.

Devotio moderna and new artistic experimentation These manifold artistic efforts contributed to propelling the fifteenth-century naturalistic style towards the hyper-realistic tastes that would assert themselves in the following century. In this direction, one of the techniques that especially lent itself to experimentation was the miniature, which as early as 1440 had enjoyed an extraordinary expansion. When the Grandes Heures de Rohan codex was compiled in the 1420s, an artist examining its pages would not have appeared particularly concerned with the new rules of perspective, although by contrast, he would have borne witness to the exceptional attention paid to the realistic reproduction of bodies and sentiments, applying them with the taste for the pathetic that was popular in those years. An observation of the Virgin Mary sprawling over the body of Christ (fig. 2) shows the sensitivity with which bodies and faces were depicted, together with the impressive minutia in detail found in expressions and gestures. The expressive charge that characterises individual subjects tends to individualise them with extreme precision, with the intention of rendering them unique and no longer the mere interpreters of a fixed scene. If one wishes to understand fully the weight of this shift (these issues assume relevance in virtue of the reflections that will emerge in the context of the 4 Jérôme Cottin, Le regard et la Parole. Une théologie protestante de l’image (Genève: Labor et Fides, 1994), 242.

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Reformation), it should be measured in contrast to the course taken by Byzantine and Russian iconography. As an example, we can examine the icon of Sveta Troijka, Andrei Rublev’s masterpiece. This work has had a significant influence on western art until today (fig. 106). The three angels around the table are exact copies of each other. There are no differences; even their poses and gazes correspond in full. There are no indicators to attribute either age or gender. The very episode of Abraham’s philoxenia found in Gen 18 has been removed and divested of the traditional narrative frame used to portray the story of Abraham and Sarah’s hospitality. The effect of the great piety and emotional involvement in Rublev’s work does not traverse the search for expression commonly found in French miniatures, but passes rather along traditional paths: the architecture of the figures, the use of colours and their symbolic values, the static nature and the general, silent contemplation of the cup in the centre of the table replicated in the drawn space of the figures of the three angels, and the play of glances expressing the Trinitarian perichoresis in the passage of the chalice of the first covenant and of the Eucharist in the New Testament.5 These two very different, if not opposed, modalities mentioned in the previous paragraphs equally demonstrate the effects of the devotio moderna which was consolidated at the end of the fourteenth century. They promoted an intimate and personal spirituality of the faithful in direct contact with the sacrifice of Christ and without intermediation. In this vein, an artwork became an object whose contemplation offered the faithful the occasion to contemplate themselves and their own faith. One of the privileged subjects of this new relationship with images was Christ’s Passion, where the representation of victory over death was replaced by the depiction of the suffering of that very death: the torments of the human being become those of the Son of God who, through his sacrifice on the cross, offers humankind a powerful moment of participation in the divine. In the Grandes Heures de Rohan, this is further extended; the observer not only witnesses the death of Christ, whose emaciated body lies on the ground and from whose wounds redeeming blood spills, but s/he also sees the totally human pain of Mary, who appears literally to fling herself over the body of her son. Through her veil, we see a face aged with pain. Her plain clothing reflects not the sumptuousness of fabric but rather convenience and simplicity. In the top right, the face of God the Father is not marked by a medieval impassivity or a hieratic character (signs of divine omnipotence), but He is Himself humanised and portrayed as an

5 Boespflug, Le immagini di Dio, especially 116–17; Lev Gillet (Un Moine de l’Église d’Orient), ‘La signification spirituelle de l’icône de la Sainte Trinité peinte par André Roublev’, Irenikon 26 (1953) 133–9.

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old man who takes part in equal measure in the human pain that is being consumed in the scene below. The effect reduces the scene to a family affair. Devotio moderna thus deemed an artwork to be a tool to lead the faithful towards a direct communion with God through the contemplative meditation on the painting, plate or page. The image intended to foster an experience of authentic, interior faith and ‘the desire for a direct and immediate relationship with the sacred’.6 The artist was driven to reformulate his/her stylistic language towards greater restraint and a drastic limitation of the frivolous, mundane and sensual charge of the work. Alongside subjects that exalted the Christo-centrism and the compassion of the Father, other themes were developed that were more accessible in terms of private devotion, such as those found in the plate by Bernardo Daddi (fig. 1). During the 1330s, he painted a woman accompanied by two family members in the act of praying to the Virgin Mary. She is depicted within a frame that appears to outline a window onto the afterlife. In her left hand, she holds an open book and her right extends outside the frame. Her right arm and her gaze are projected towards the kneeling woman in a gesture of favour and direct participation in the woman’s prayer. Michele Bacci defined this iconographic current as pro anima, highlighting the visual methods used to depict an active, reciprocal relation among the expectations of the faithful, their supplications and the gestures of actual intercession by the sacred subjects addressed, who, in turn, are able to guarantee the fulfilment of the requests for salvation.7

New iconographies in political culture and devotional culture From the late Middle Ages, in the affirmation of an increasingly personal relationship with the sacred image, which is rendered a true and proper instrument of prayer and devotional practice, the figure of the Virgin experiences newfound attention. This development is seen in the spread of the iconographic motif that places her in an active role in the process of divine intercession together with Christ. The notion that not only the Son but also the Virgin mother can intervene directly with God is not biblical in nature. It appears in art from the eleventh century with the development of a more structured cult of the Virgin as mater misericordiae and mater omnium. Over the course of the fifteenth century, there are many instances of motifs of the dual intercession, where the Virgin stands alongside the Son in a two-voiced, single action with Jesus showing his wounds to 6 Bacci, ‘L’effige sacra’, 228. 7 Michele Bacci, ‘Pro remedio animae’. Immagini sacre e pratiche devozionali in Italia centrale (secoli XIII e XIV) (Pisa: ETS, 2000).

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the Father and the Madonna who uncovers her breast in memory of nursing Christ, both asking God to have mercy on sinners. While on the one hand, the Virgin – together with Christ – becomes directly responsible for the salvation of humankind, on the other, with the spread of the iconography of her Coronation by the Trinity, she returns to dominating the visual scene. The theme of the Coronation is not solely limited to the figure of the Virgin but is also extended to God. In a retranslation of the religious value of the political signs of power, the crown becomes an attribute of the Virgin in much the same way as the peculiar triple crown may become an attribute of God the Father. This is evidenced mainly in the spread in French environments, from the beginning of the fifteenth century, of a unique iconographic subject that depicts God in the clothes of the pope. Crowned with the papal tiara, he is often dressed in the priestly vestments that the pope donned during liturgical ceremonies and seated on a throne that recalls the cathedra Petri. This ‘pope-ifying’ of God has been the subject of a multitude of different interpretations: the fact that it emerged in particular in French miniatures has led some scholars to see it as an exaltation of the papacy in the aftermath of the reorganisation brought about by the Western Schism. Other scholars, by contrast, do not believe it to be an emphasis of the temporal powers of the pope, but rather a warning to the contrary: the triple crown and the symbols of papal power have celestial, divine derivations, and the pope is but the earthly reflection of such and is not in total possession of divine powers. That being said, this is certainly not the historical path of its portrayal. This iconographic typology would remain limited in its diffusion. While it is found primarily in France, it is possible to see some examples in Spain, as shown e. g. in fig. 16, which depicts both the Father and the Holy Spirit with the triple crown as they turn the screws on a mystical winepress. This representation was not found in Germany. During the years of the Protestant Reformation, when no one would have dreamt of raising the papal tiara and placing it on the head of God, it was used instead as a symbol unmistakably evoking the Antichrist. It was employed almost exclusively8 in prints of a certain type of caricature to represent the pope and his iniquity (see fig. 5, 54, 87, 88). Moreover, in this figurative genre there was no hesitation in adding more than three crowns to the tiara as an act of sarcasm and derision. During the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, German sacred art saw artists crowning God with a crown that was not dissimilar to the imperial one.

8 Jan Harasimowicz demonstrated how God with the crown made sporadic appearances in Reformed countries as well, see François Boespflug, ‘Dieu en Pape. Une singularité de l’art religieux de la fin du Moyen Age’, Revue Mabillon n.s., 2 (1991) 167–205, on 183.

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Luther and the renewed catechistic function of images From the end of the fifteenth to the beginning of the sixteenth century, many expressed a certain degree of discomfort at this flourishing visual culture with canons and aesthetic values that had long since become independent of the patron and location. Theologians, including Pierre d’Ailly, Vincenzo Ferrer and Girolamo Savonarola, perceived the risk of the observer’s increasingly ‘material’ and ‘sensual’ consummation of the image. This debate was anything but new: ever since the time of the iconoclast querelle, the West had rejected Isaurian rigour. That being said, it was nonetheless fascinated with its position – if we consider that the Carolingian propaganda against the Second Council of Nicaea arrived at theorising the principle of nec adorare, nec frangi,9 which was not the conciliar solution. Be that as it may, images persisted in Gregorian logic with the function of being the Scriptures of the unsophisticated: they offered the possibility to worship what is represented through the veneration of representation. It was a way to legitimise even the boldest forms of art, which certain ‘pre-Reformers’ such as Jan Hus would contest. Before his execution at the Council of Constance, Jan Hus had become a critic of the sumptuousness of images and the excessive sensuality of certain representations of the Virgin, and he had spoken out against the advantages the Church had drawn from the faithful’s idolatrous use of such depictions. Despite this criticism, neither Hus nor Erasmus more than a century later would question the pedagogical function of the image in and of itself, or criticise its being an object of cult within the limits of general sobriety. However, both voiced a mistrust that was similar to Martin Luther’s outlook. Luther did not, in point of fact, elaborate a systematic stance on this issue. Instead, it could be said that he spoke ‘strategically’ of the appropriateness of the use of images, their function and their advantages and disadvantages depending on prevailing needs of different interlocutors, ‘never iconoclastic, only temporarily iconophobic and selectively iconomachus’, as Boespflug defined him. On this issue, too, Luther passed through various seasons (if not distinctly different phases) of thought. As Cottin observed, until 1522 he had voiced stark criticism against the visual culture of the time: in theology, he drastically rejected both images and any other object of cult as an object of devotion that distracts the faithful from the sole right thing: listening to the Word.10 The Verbum is the exclusive vehicle of grace and salvation. In this order of ideas, images are either 9 Jean Wirth, ‘Il culto delle immagini’, in Castelnuovo/Sergi (ed.), Arti e storia nel Medioevo, vol. 3, 3–47, on 7. 10 Cottin, Le regard et la Parole, 259–68.

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completely irrelevant (adiaphora) or harmful as they feed the theology of merit and therefore the pride of those who are deluded into seeing the proclamation of Christ in worldly realties.11 In a sermon on Ps 8, Luther explicitly states that ‘the Kingdom of God is one of hearing, not of seeing’.12 In 1522, however, the context had changed. During the isolation of the Reformers at Wartburg, practical solutions were sought in Wittenberg to apply the new reforms. One of the main actors in this phase was Andreas Karlstadt. After having adhered to Luther’s early ideas, Karlstadt and other Reformers intensified and expanded them more radically, especially those referring to the issue of images. They turned to the First Commandment and criticised the iconographic function supported by Pope Gregory I in the belief that, in addition to the clergy, laypeople also had the right to recognise what was truly divine in the Word. Images were not divine, and because they belonged to exteriority and corporeity, they were subordinate to the Word contained in the Book. Karlstadt’s numerous sermons, however, coincided with the first instances of unrest carried out by groups of citizens who decided not to wait for authorisation from local authorities to divest the churches and monasteries of their artistic wealth. Concern on the part of city council magistrates and the Prince-Elector in relation to the commotion led to Karlstadt’s progressive isolation, since he was considered the primary instigator of the unsophisticated people’s unrest, and to Luther’s being recalled to the city. Karlstadt left Wartburg on 1 March 1522, and the situation was swiftly brought under control. The eight sermons that Luther delivered from 9 March dealt with the complex mainstays of the application of the Wittenberg reform. As far as images were concerned, he stated that in themselves they were ‘neither good nor bad’. They became harmful when they were made objects of idolatrous practices both by those venerating them as icons, repositories themselves of the divine, and by those believing they acted in the service of God by destroying them.13 At the time

11 François Boespflug, ‘Les étapes de la réflexion de Luther sur l’usage des images religieuses’, in Boespflug, François/Fogliadini, Emanuela (ed.), Lutero, la Riforma e le arti. L’articolato rapporto con la pittura, l’architettura e la musica (Milano: Glossa, 2017) 33–52. 12 Cited in Cottin, Le regard et la Parole, 262. 13 Martin Luther, Luther’s Works: American Edition, edited by Pelikan, Jaroslav/Lehmann, Helmut T. (55 vols.; Saint Louis, MO: Concordia and Philadelphia: Fortress, 1955–86), vol. 40 (1958), 84; in this meaning, Luther openly states the Karlstadt’s greatest error was to engage in destroying images, yet ‘removing them from sight and leaving them in the heart’ of the faithful. In this way, the opposite effect is achieved; instead of weakening the image and stripping it of its substance as an idol that is in the inner lives of the faithful, it eliminates it externally by force without caring for what rests in the souls of Christians. Later, when reflecting on the violent methods of those who incite the people to iconoclast uprisings, Luther reaches the following conclusions: ‘This is to do away with images in a Karlstadtian manner, […] it is a work of the law which has taken place without the Spirit and faith. Yet it

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when Karlstadt was being increasingly marginalised and essentially driven to leave Wittenberg, Luther struck a blow with the publication of Against the Heavenly Prophets in the Matter of Images and Sacraments, which contains the harshest criticism of Karlstadt and the Schwärmer. In this treatise, we find Luther’s most organic reflection on the issue of images, which from 1525 proves him to be opening up to iconographic culture. Having already reached the conclusion that the image in itself is a neutral object without intrinsic value until that value is endowed on it, according to its eventual use, Luther reiterated that art is without substance. This renders it subordinate to the Word inasmuch as it is only ancilla theologiae.14 Yet the iconoclasm of Karlstadt and the Schwärmer led Luther to recover a positive function of images as repositories of relevant didactic value. Be that as it may, Luther had ascertained with his typical vigour as the exegete he was that the Bible does not indeed condemn images, yet the Bible is full of examples where Jesus speaks in parables and images to assist in humankind’s understanding of God’s message. Because human beings are sinners by nature, they are unable to comprehend God’s Word correctly through their capacities alone. God, who is merciful and good, uses the instruments of humankind, its mental categories and its sensorial characteristics as proof of his love. In this light, the image becomes a sign of the divine gift and of the presence of his word in the world. In Against the Heavenly Prophets, Luther confers on the image a threefold capacity: the first is mainly linked to memory because the image becomes a witness and visible sign of God and of faith; a second expresses an educational function because images can help understand the Word, especially for the less sophisticated; the last capacity is identified as the power of ‘mediation’ because it helps interiorise faith and the message of salvation, ‘For whether I will or not, when I hear of Christ, an image of a man hanging on a cross takes form in my heart, just as the reflection of my face naturally appears in the water look into it’. Hence, Luther wished to emphasise the fact that evoking mental images to grasp the heard message was a natural activity and ‘If it is not a sin but good to have the image of Christ in my heart, why should it be a sin to have it in my eyes?’.15 Jérôme Cottin, in fact, spoke of an image without aesthetics. In essence, Luther’s image is one ‘reduced to visual meaning’, which acquires no artistic autonomy but remains necessarily linked to the text to which it refers. For Luther, the image is only writing depicted; or rather, it is Scripture depicted, and when it departs from the Book, it must be deplored and censured. makes for pride of heart, as though they by such works had gained a special status before God. Actually this means teaching works and the free will all over again’; ibid., 89. 14 Cottin, Le regard et la Parole, 264–6. 15 Luther, Luther’s Works, vol. 40, 90–1.

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Given these circumstances, patrons and artists adapted their iconographic subjects. Indeed, the Reformer does not shirk from privileging some subjects and condemning others, for example, Christ of the Parousia, the dual intercession, the Virgin of Mercy and the Lactation of Saint Bernard. The first causes excessive fear in believers, discouraging them from faith and saying nothing of forgiveness, the love of Christ or his sacrifice for humankind;16 the other three divert attention from true faith in Christ through the presence of Mary with her excessively worldly or sensual representations. Therefore, condemnation or favour do not depend solely on aesthetic taste but rather are the expression of a theological judgement referred to in a faith where the Word lies at the centre of the hearts of worshippers. The image and how it is used are not to be linked to the conception of theologies of the works,17 but they are at the service of the Proclamation.18 Does this mean that the Reformation introduced a typically Protestant ‘repertoire’? It does not because Reformers drew from a repertoire that was already in use, the Baptism of Christ, the Trinity, the Throne of Grace, the Good Shepherd and the Mystical Winepress to be described further below. Instead, what is clearly recognisable is the transformed style in portrayal and in preferred techniques.19 In much the same way as for sacred music, Luther significantly scaled down the expressive role of the image, substantially stripping it of its aesthetic autonomy. The art he promoted was characterised by a more rigid canon, which finds greater structure in the work of Cranach.

Reformation art: new paths for the salvation of the soul Of no less importance than Dürer, the studio of Lucas Cranach the Elder and his son Cranach the Younger had a profound influence on all subsequent art in the German and Flemish context. Similar to music, their artistic ‘legibility’ would go beyond the confines of the Reformed confession. Indeed, Cranach’s art was the most rigorous expression of Luther’s theological thought. Cranach the Elder was the official painter to the Court of Saxony from 1525, and later to the Prince16 See for example Margarete Stirm, ‘Les images et la Bible’, in Bedouelle, Guy/Roussel, Bernard (ed.), Le temps des Réformes et la Bible (8 vols.; Paris: Beauchesne, 1989) vol. 5, 683–750, on 689. 17 Franco Buzzi, ‘Martin Lutero: le arti a servizio della Parola’, in Boespflug/Fogliadini (ed.), Lutero, la Riforma e le arti, 3–20. 18 Boespflug, ‘Dieu en Pape’, 268–70. 19 Bernard Aikemait, ‘L’immagine della Riforma, la riforma dell’immagine: problemi di pittura religiosa nel Cinquecento fra l’Italia, la Francia e l’Europa’, in Benedict, Philip/Seidel Menchi, Silvana/Tallon, Alain (ed.), La Réforme en France et en Italie (Roma: École française de Rome, 2007) 223–41.

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Elector Frederick III. He was a close friend of Luther and a believer in his doctrines; in 1525, he and his wife were the witnesses at Luther and Katharina’s wedding. In the following year, Cranach was a witness to the baptism of their firstborn child, and in 1541 Luther chose him to be his daughter’s godfather. Cranach’s art naturally assimilated Luther’s notions and actively contributed to their propagation: the printing presses inaugurated in Wittenberg in 1523 published prints and cover pages of the main works of the Reformation and a considerable number of contentious pamphlets. Cranach and Luther worked very closely together; on many occasions, Luther himself suggested the iconographic motifs of the paintings or engravings and corrected their content if he thought them too distant from the biblical story.20 One of the characteristics of Reformed sacred art was a strict adherence to biblical stories. Beginning with Cranach the Elder, these tales were made topical and set within the daily life and politics of the community of the age. For example, the altarpiece in Wittenberg (fig. 47–8) shows Luther preaching to a small assembly, with his wife Katharina and some of their children present. In the centre panel that illustrates the Lord’s Supper, Cranach again depicts an apostle with Luther’s features dressed as Junker Jörg21 offering a chalice to a servant that resembles Cranach the Younger. The left panel portrays Philip Melanchthon celebrating a baptism where one of the godfathers (to the left) is a self-portrait of the artist; the godfather on the right is Johannes Bugenhagen, the pastor of St Mary’s Church in Wittenberg. Bugenhagen is holding two keys that have the power of binding and loosening. These had previously been the exclusive symbols of St Peter and thus of the Pope of Rome. With the white key, he readmits a believer to communion; with the grey key, he pushes another away. It should come as no surprise that Cranach had few qualms about using an object so dear to the Catholic tradition in order to create his altarpiece (he created many of them, see infra also fig. 55). From a technical point of view, there were few significant innovations in the 1520s and afterwards, except for specific, precise choices in the use and placement of traditional instruments. The altarpiece, for example, which was usually meant to mark the most sacred space in the ‘papist’ liturgical area, became a Lutheran catechistic tool for teaching the true 20 Jérôme Cottin, ‘Cranach et le protestantisme’, Arts Sacrés 7 (2010) 28–35. 21 After the Diet of Worms and the retreat to Wartburg, Luther assumed the false name of Junker Jörg, set aside his habits and grew his beard and hair. This change in appearance was not simply connected to the need for a false identity, but it also involved significant symbolic value: Luther meant it as a sign of protest against canon law and the Catholic uses of tradition. In certain portraits, he is portrayed in the appearance of Junker Jörg with a doublet and sword to evoke the miles Christi that, like Saint George, fought the dragon; that is, the Church of Rome, cf. Maria Lucia Weigel, ‘Martin Luther in Portraits’, in Melloni, Alberto (ed.), Martin Luther. A Christian between Reforms and Modernity (1517–2017) (2 vols.; Berlin: De Gruyter, 2017) vol. 2, 1093–1118, on 1103.

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faith. Furthermore, Luther had stripped not only cult objects of their old meaning, but also the spaces and accompanying furnishings. Religious architectural elements, as products of art, are subordinate to sola Scriptura, because they are ‘places of sonority, not of vision’.22 Within the sacred environment, the altarpiece thus becomes solely an instructive panel located at the centre of a space where the pulpit remains the essential element from which the Word resounds and which the altar reflects as a visual focus. This became the primary difference in Reformed architecture: on the basis of the fundamental dividing line in the conception of the Eucharist, the Reformed churches drastically reduced the role of the altar. In addition to removing all liturgical furnishings and images, both devotional and memorial, Reformers also eliminated all the accessory altars along the aisles, placed the benches around the pulpit and generally arranged the altar and the baptismal font at the foot of the pulpit. For the Eucharist and communion rite, long tables were often placed to accommodate worshippers, sometimes even outside the church itself (fig. 110–11). The painters of the early Reformation cultivated novel interpretations of the theorisation of art that was endowed with a primarily catechistic function. It offered to those aspiring to salvation a path along which there was no longer need for the traditional signs of past iconography. By contrast, it posed a truth rediscovered in the facets and expressions of human physicality. It was a new conceptual elaboration that presented the papacy with the possibility to foster rich ambiguity, allowing patrons to commission the sacred and for artists to personalise and express their own meaning of art and of humankind.

Strategies of communication and propaganda in Reformation art: representations, identity and memory The different ways in which the Reformation constructed a culture of the image according to whatever aims this identity was intended is a theme in its own right, as is demonstrated by the essays printed here. If compelled to choose a subject that exemplifies these tendencies, the image of Luther himself could be selected. Upon examination, the portrait par excellence of Martin Luther reveals a significant evolution. This transformation can be traced along two paths: the first follows the same steps as his reflections on the image, while the other follows the reception of his figure from the 1520s on. An excellent essay by Maria Lucia 22 Federico Bellini, ‘Riforma protestante e riforma dell’architettura religiosa’, in Bancu, Stefano (ed.), Riforma e modernità. Prospettive e bilanci a 500 anni dalle Tesi di Lutero (Roma: Studium, 2018) 79–101, on 81.

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Weigel explores the subject of Luther’s portrait by Cranach the Elder.23 Indeed, all the iconographic representations of Luther can be traced back to him. These depictions would later become prototypes; reproduced in series, replicated in other mediums and using other techniques, they rose to become foundational models of distinctive iconographic traditions. Luther’s first portrait (1520), in this case a copperplate engraving, remains an example of humanist iconography. It depicts a full bust inserted within a niche with one hand holding an open book and the other raised in an oratory gesture. It is accompanied by an epigraph that recalls the antiquity of certain Roman funeral practices. Shortly thereafter, a re-elaboration of this portrait by Hans Baldung was circulated. This Strasbourg artist removed the niche, and above Luther’s head he placed a halo and a dove, symbols of the Holy Spirit. This transition clearly demonstrates the shift in intentions, turning Luther – at the time involved in the Diet of Worms – into a Reformation saint. The popularising and propagandistic scope of Luther’s effigy returned to the fore in 1523. Daniel Hopfer took one of Cranach’s icons of Luther dressed in the vestments of a doctor and exegete and not only added a halo but also translated the original Latin into the German language. Ottavia Niccoli offers interesting observations concerning these first early portrayals. She notes how the choice of clothing in which Luther was depicted went far beyond customs and fashion: ‘Almost all the representations show him dressed as a monk and not in his doctoral gown’, which signifies that ‘his relationship with the Scripture is linked entirely to the biblical ruminatio which was typical of monks, and therefore has a religious, not a cultural, value’.24 In time, the models of the idealisation of Luther and his sanctity would be abandoned, partly due to the shift in Luther’s thought in relation to his followers’ perceptions. In January 1522, while the iconoclast riots were raging in Wittenberg, Luther launched an appeal from Wartburg that spoke of his awareness of the risks of his becoming too much the main protagonist: ‘May my name be silenced, and do not call yourselves Lutherans but Christians instead. What is Luther? The doctrine is not mine, nor have I been sacrificed for anyone’, followed by, ‘I am certain the word is not mine, but rather the word of Christ’. This standpoint also brought about a shift in the portraiture effected in Cranach’s studio. Stripped of all the symbols of sacred iconography, Luther’s portrait became that of a simple man, in accordance with his principles: ‘The 23 Weigel, ‘Martin Luther in Portraits’. 24 Ottavia Niccoli, ‘Aleandro a Worms (1520–1521). Fonti figurate della Riforma nelle parole di un avversario’, in Felici, Lucia (ed.), Ripensare la Riforma protestante. Nuove prospettive degli studi italiani (Torino: Claudiana, 2015) 325–46, on 332.

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beings thus represented are but men, creatures of God; they possess both dignity and insuperable weakness or, to take the words from the letter to the Hebrews, they are “foreigners and strangers on earth” (Heb 11:13)’.25 Drawing on the humanist canons of realism, physiognomy and anatomy, the most famous portrait of Luther was created. It is a ‘photograph’ with a naturalistic realism in the folds of his skin and the aging of his bone-structure. Idealisation was lost but a decisive accentuation of the individual’s identity was articulated. The portrait is divested of its mythical and heroic aura, but is no less functional in making him the central figure of Protestant memory. It acquired political value when he appeared, armed with the Bible, alongside Ulrich von Hutten, who in turn was armed with a sword. The association of the two figures endowed Luther with an undeniably political role; he is portrayed as the leader and defender of all things German and beyond. The representation also depicted him as the valiant soldier of Christ and the founder of the Church of renewed faith. The new series of portraits depicts him half- or three-quarter-bust, wearing a cap and cloak. From 1539, he is generally painted bareheaded and with a book in his hand. These portraits were accompanied by numerous engravings by Dürer, whose art continued to be an inspiration for Cranach’s studio. The culmination of these works is found in the portrait of Luther on his deathbed (see fig. 26), where he is painted half-bust wearing a white shirt. His eyes are closed, and his expression of serenity highlights his peaceful death and grace. It can be clearly surmised from his own portraits that not only did Luther become more indulgent over time towards the visual arts, but also that he began to make conscious use of them to achieve communicative goals. The culture of the Reformation was mainly one of the Word; from a theological and doctrinal point of view, this is uncontested. Having said that, in terms of the circulation of ideas and the spread of a Reformed message, there were more incisive means of communication than the printed or spoken word. Images impressed in paintings, portraits and book illustrations of the Reformation were essential to spreading the Reformed message. In addition to these, and perhaps most importantly, there were also the so-called Flugblätter. These pamphlets were produced in high numbers in printing presses in many German cities. They were small, unbound papers (generally in eighths) printed in black and white on simple paper to guarantee economy and the ease of circulation. They were essentially propagandistic in scope and could contain apologetic or controversial images, satire being the primary choice for the latter (see for example, fig. 54, 57, 87, and 88).

25 Bernard Reymond, Le protestantisme et les images. Pour en finir avec quelques clichés (Genève: Labor et Fides, 1999), 49.

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The effectiveness of the Flugblatt lay in the communicative impact of the subject depicted. Vulgarity was a potent tool for the satirical vignettes, but the graphic simplicity of the engraving also contributed to the interpretation and legibility of the message. The pamphlets were often circulated during preaching campaigns in which oral performances (sermons, songs or even theatrical plays) aided the comprehension and interiorisation of the theological and doctrinal content of the Reformation and often took on greater social meaning and value. The Flugblatt was clearly an operation of propaganda which Reformers used to spread new doctrines as widely as possible. Furthermore, the pamphlets would become an integral weapon in the heated battle against the Pope in Rome that started in the mid-1520s. Illustrated books of the theological and doctrinal principles of the Reformation were also printed. In these texts, images were used for a strictly pedagogical and didactic purpose to help those, including the illiterate, understand those principles. They had less controversialist aims but were of no less significance in the analysis of the new visual codes of the Reformation. As several essays in this work demonstrate, after the Augsburg Confession, they were drafted to highlight a precise choice of faith, and from the 1540s and in the wake of what would be defined as the processes of confessionalisation, artistic trends were set in motion to emphasise religious identity. These new tendencies were rendered in the production of Konfessionsbilder and in the spread of celebratory monuments and paintings where the theme of commemorating the dead was blended with the memory of the Reformation. The first typology includes those paintings that depict the presentation of the Confessio to the Emperor during the Diet of 1530, which – as noted by Ashley Hall – Luther and his followers considered the true break with the Catholic Church of Rome (not the nailing of the ninety-five theses that we consider today).26 The list of the articles of faith and of the abuses in need of rectification offered the first instance of an organic, normative status. This gave rise to the spread of paintings and plates where the presentation of the Confessio Augustana to the Emperor becomes the occasion to describe figuratively the content of the articles of faith. The Konfessionsbild by Andreas Herneisen, painted in 1602 for the church in Kasendorf (fig. 109), is an excellent example and a model for many others. Each scene is accompanied by a substantial text that served to describe the biblical foundations of the story illustrated. The Crucifixion of Christ dominates the centre of the painting to remind us that his sacrifice is the only thing that grants victory over death, the devil and sin. The Evangelists stand at the foot of the cross, and the sacraments are depicted 26 H. Ashley Hall, ‘Konfessionsbilder: The Process of Enforcing Confessional Identity in Early Modern Lutheran Territories’, Journal of Religion & Society. Supplement Series 13 (2016) 124– 41, on 127.

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around the scene. However, they are also accompanied by good Christian practices such as private confession, marriage, song and music. The plates of the Konfessionsbilder assumed the form of large manifestos where text and images were integrated to display the liturgy of the new faith to believers. These were set within scenes of daily life and had the aim of teaching the faith’s orthopraxis. It was common for these depictions to include sections in which, in portrayals of the struggle against heretics, the new enemies of the Lutheran faith were included, e. g. Calvin and Zwingli. In the celebratory scenes, by contrast, Martin Luther and the group from Wittenberg were shown (e. g. fig. 47). In the epitaph of Meyenburg (fig. 56), a group of men standing are seen on the left and the features of Martin Luther and Philip Melanchthon are clearly recognisable. This is an example in contrast to that offered by the Kasendorf table. In the Kasendorf one, the Wittenberg group is shown in its original role as directors of the Reformation; in the epitaph, greater value is given to testimony and to the homage owed to Meyenburg. This is effected by portraying his circle of friends and by the presence of Erasmus of Rotterdam, who, far from being one of the heralds of the Reformation, was instead a friend of the deceased and of his family.27 Images lose their aesthetics and sanctity, but other functions and aspirations are transferred onto them. This would not suffice to impede the substantial decline of visual art in the German context from the eighteenth century on. It would, however, permit them to play a central role in instruction and in the spread of religious, social, even political knowledge.

Acknowledgements The editors wish to express their gratitude for all those who have contributed to the realisation of the Fourth RefoRC Conference and to this volume. A special thanks is owed to the Fondazione per le scienze religiose Giovanni XXIII of Bologna and to its Secretary, Professor Alberto Melloni, who in May 2014 welcomed hundreds of scholars from all over Europe and allowed this work to be accomplished, to the enormous satisfaction of all those involved in it. We also thank the Reformation Research Consortium (RefoRC), whose work fostered active and fruitful collaboration among all the partners. Last but not least, a heartfelt thanks to Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, Karla Boersma and to Herman Selderhuis for their precious help over the years. 27 Otto Gerhard Oexle, ‘La storia e le immagini. La memoria della Riforma nelle opere di Lucas Cranach e Hans Holbein’, Reti medievali 7 (2006) 137–63.

Images between traditional iconographics and new theological meanings

Joanna Kaz´mierczak

Who is who in God’s pasture: functions of the motif of the Good Shepherd in German prints in the first half of the 16th century

Introduction The motif of the Good Shepherd – the artistic representation of Christ as a shepherd carrying a lamb on his shoulders – is one of the oldest and best-known subjects in Christian iconography.1 As one of the symbols of its most ancient, early Christian phase, it is one of the most compelling examples of the process of adaptation of elements belonging to the earlier, pagan tradition to the new religion. One might ask whether there is any reason for telling the same story all over again. Seen from the perspective of a German printer or publisher living in the first half of the sixteenth century, this story is not exactly the same. The sheep could act as something more than just a simple representation of the soul lostand-found. A wolf might be dressed in a shepherd’s clothes. What is even more interesting, there might be more than just one good shepherd. Many of the iconographical interpretations of this motif focussed mainly on its associations with the Parable of the Lost Sheep, which one can read in the Gospel of Matthew (Matt 18:12–14) and Luke (Luke 15:3–7).2 The meaning of the parable is distinctly soteriological and contains some references to the issue of God’s grace. However, it seems that in the case of early modern German graphic arts, these passages from the Holy Scripture may have been used only as a secondary source to help understand the meaning of the particular prints and to explain what their authors wanted to express by choosing the iconographical motif of the Good Shepherd. As the main point of reference, the often unfairly marginalised tenth chapter of the Gospel of John (John 10:1–18), should be mentioned here as the main point of reference. Looking back at the first half of the sixteenth century and its artistic legacy, we can see distinctly how that passage 1 For basic information on the subject of the iconography of the Good Shepherd and further reading, see Anton Legner, ‘Hirt, Guter Hirt’, Lexikon der christlichen Ikonographie 2 (1970) 289–99. 2 Ibid.

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was intensely actualised and how it suited perfectly – in the eyes of a member of the German society of that time – the current religious and political realities. The dramatis personae that appear in that passage were commonly identified as real people (in most cases then still living) or at least specific religious groups. The thieves and the bandits, the wolves and the hired hands, and, last but not least, the sheep and the shepherd himself were all given their modern identities. Furthermore, the extant examples of German graphic arts of the time deliberately show how elements such as the sheepfold and its gate, the attack of the wolves and (probably most importantly) the voice of the shepherd were understood. Very truly, I tell you, anyone who does not enter the sheepfold by the gate but climbs in by another way is a thief and a bandit. The one who enters by the gate is the shepherd of the sheep. The gatekeeper opens the gate for him, and the sheep hear his voice. He calls his own sheep by name and leads them out. When he has brought out all his own, he goes ahead of them, and the sheep follow him because they know his voice. They will not follow a stranger, but they will run from him because they do not know the voice of strangers. […] I am the gate for the sheep. All who came before me are thieves and bandits; but the sheep did not listen to them. […] Whoever enters by me will be saved, and will come in and go out and find pasture. The thief comes only to steal and kill and destroy. I came that they may have life, and have it abundantly. I am the good shepherd. The good shepherd lays down his life for the sheep. The hired hand, who is not the shepherd and does not own the sheep, sees the wolf coming and leaves the sheep and runs away – and the wolf snatches them and scatters them.3

The opinion, shared by many contemporary scholars, that the development of the Reformation would not have been possible without the development of printing, and, vice versa, the expansion of print without the progress of Reformation, is worth recalling in this context.4 For the history of German graphic arts, the sixteenth century could be described as a moment when printed pieces of paper started to function in a way similar to today’s mass media.5 They worked to a great extent as an illustration of, a commentary on or even as a tool for creating the new reality, rather than as artistic objects. A good print was an effective one. Its effectiveness was achieved – among other things – thanks to the process of the 3 John 10:1–12. 4 For more information and further bibliography see Johannes Burkhardt, Das Reformationsjahrhundert. Deutsche Geschichte zwischen Medienrevolution und Institutionenbildung 1517– 1617 (Stuttgart: W. Kohlhammer Verlag, 2002). 5 Robert W. Scribner, For the Sake of Simple Folk. Popular Propaganda for the German Reformation (Cambridge/New York: Cambridge University Press, 1981); Robert W. Scribner, ‘Reformatorische Bildpropaganda’, in Tolkemitt, Brigitte/Wohlfeil, Rainer (ed.), Historische Bildkunde. Probleme, Wege, Beispiele (Berlin: Duncker & Humblot, 1991) 83–106; René Hirner/ Stefan Heinlein (ed.), Vom Holzschnitt zum Internet. Die Kunst und die Geschichte der Bildmedien von 1450 bis heute (Ostfildern-Ruit: Cantz, 1997). For a critical approach see e. g.: David Landau/Peter W. Parshall, The Renaissance Print 1470–1550 (New Haven/London: Yale University Press, 1994), 219.

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creation of whole, rich webs of iconographical associations, based on well-known motifs. These motifs were further somewhat reinterpreted and connected to elements derived from the iconographical tradition as well as from the political and religious reality of that time. Things were no different in the case of the motif of the Good Shepherd.

The biblical motif of the Good Shepherd and its theological contexts I should like to focus on four groups of important issues that may be of use when trying to explain how that motif functioned in German prints in the first half of the sixteenth century. First of all, on the eschatological and soteriological issues. We can distinguish two aspects of this: the first referring to the issues of salvation and sacrifice (the good shepherd as the one who ‘lays down his life for the sheep’, as one reads in John 10:11, and the shepherd as the gate to salvation: ‘I am the gate for the sheep’, John 10:9); the other to the prediction of the Last Judgement, when the shepherd will divide the sheep and the goats/rams (as it says in Ezek 34, and in Matt 25). Although some traces of both these aspects are visible in the most of the prints depicting the Good Shepherd, they rarely become the main point of the artistic focus. Regarding the fact that we are dealing here with popular media, dedicated first and foremost to ‘simple folk’, the aspect of propaganda and religious polemics (often rather unrefined) is the issue that often comes to the fore. The good shepherd appears not only as a peaceful leader who wanders through the hills in the search of the lost sheep but is also a defender, a fighter. The motif thus unexpectedly becomes highly aggressive. The creation of such a new mood was possible thanks to the processes of the connection of the subject of the Good Shepherd to other biblical motifs, or, on the other hand, thanks to the some kind of distillation of the smaller elements initially composing everything surrounding the motif (in the way described in the Gospel of John). We can see a representation of the fight between the good shepherd and the wild animals without seeing a depiction of the shepherd sensu stricto. Or, quite the reverse, we see the good shepherd, who is ready to lay down his own life for the life of the sheep, but without any (visible) foe on the horizon. However, the most important issue remains the relationship between the word and the picture, between the audible and the visible. The motif of the Good Shepherd turned out to have great potential as a tool helping to express in the artistic form the gradation of the written, the spoken (audible) and the visible Word (that is: Scriptura, verbum audibile and verbum visibile), so characteristic of the Lutheran doctrine6. The 6 About this issue see Joanna Kaz´mierczak, ‘How Can the Effects of Hearing Be Depicted? The Drachstedt Epitaph, the Good Shepherd and the Relations between Word and Image’, in

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graphic interpretations of the motif of the Good Shepherd functioned in this case on two levels, being, on the one hand, simply an illustration of the Word and, on the other, an illustration of the effectiveness of the Word. Hearing the Word means following the path to salvation. The aforecited passages from the Gospel of John emphasise the meaning of the shepherd’s voice: the sheep follow him, because they recognise his voice, not because they recognise him only by his appearance. They do not follow strangers because they do not know their voices. Such conclusions led to the creation of the new creature, which appears within the context of the Good Shepherd: the wolf in shepherd’s clothing, the Bad Shepherd, or, eventually – the Anti-Shepherd. The parallels with the Anti-Christ are obvious. The Anti-Shepherd is not only the evil one because he does not tend the sheep but is also the complete negation of the Good Shepherd’s readiness to sacrifice himself: instead of laying down his own life, the Anti-Shepherd brings death upon his flock. It is not surprising that the motif of the Good Shepherd and its mighty antithesis perfectly suited the needs of anti-papal and anti-clerical propaganda. In this case, we must indicate Chapter 34 of the Book of Ezekiel as the main biblical source, which, actualised in the hands of the artists, poets and theologians living in the sixteenth century, served well as an accurate description of the malpractices of the papacy and the clergy: Ah, you shepherds of Israel who have been feeding yourselves! […] You eat the fat, you clothe yourselves with the wool, you slaughter the fatlings; but you do not feed the sheep. You have not strengthened the weak, you have not healed the sick, […] you have not sought the lost, but with force and harshness you have ruled them. So they were scattered, because there was no shepherd; and scattered, they became food for all the wild animals. […] For thus says the Lord God: I myself will search for my sheep, and will seek them out. […] I will bring them out from the peoples and gather them from the countries, and will bring them into their own land. […] I shall judge between sheep and sheep, between rams and goats. […] I will set up over them one shepherd, my servant David, and he shall feed them […]. I will make with them a covenant of peace and banish wild animals from the land, so that they may live in the wild and sleep in the woods securely.7

Seyderhelm, Bettina (ed.), Cranach-Werke am Ort ihrer Bestimmung. Tafelbilder der Malerfamilie Cranach und ihres Umkreises in den Kirchen der Evangelischen Kirche in Mitteldeutschland (Regensburg: Verlag Friedrich Pustet, 2015) 311–20. 7 Ezek 34:2–25.

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The motif of the Good Shepherd in pictorial arts Needless to say, some of the aforementioned phenomena can be observed in the pictorial arts of earlier periods. The connection of the visual representation of the Good Shepherd with the eschatology in early Christian art is well known: the motif appeared on the walls or ceilings in the catacombs, and above all in the sepulchral sculpture.8 One of the most important early Christian works of art containing the sculpted representation of the Good Shepherd, the fountain built in Constantinople on Emperor Constantine’s recommendation, serves well as an early example of two other processes.9 As the first one, we can name the characteristic combination of the motif of the Good Shepherd with another important biblical subject (here: with Daniel in the lions’ den); as the second one, drawing a parallel between the motif and the aspect of the battle for the sheeps’ lives. In this case, the combination of the shepherd and the lions recalls the passage from the First Book of Samuel, where David says to Saul before the fight with Goliath: Your servant used to keep sheep for his father; and whenever a lion or a bear came, and took a lamb from the flock, I went after it and struck it down, rescuing the lamb from its mouth; and if it turned against me, I would catch it by the jaw, strike it down, and kill it. Your servant has killed both lions and bears; […] The Lord, who saved me from the paw of the lion and from the paw of the bear, will save me from the hand of this Philistine.10

Another important issue is the use of the motif of the Good Shepherd as an illustration of the relations between the audible (that is, the spoken Word) and the visible, as well as spreading the content of the audible message through the pictorial medium. These aspects are noticeable in such works as the decoration of the Hypogeum of the Aurelii at viale Manzoni in Rome or in some baptisteries (e. g. in Dura Europos, in San Giovanni in Fonte in Naples or in the Lateran Baptistery),11 as well as in the aforementioned fountain in Constantinople. In the Middle Ages, the motif had been still present in graphic arts,12 but it did not gain much popularity until the turn of the fifteenth and the sixteenth century, especially in Germany. However, the beginnings were quite modest. The woodcut 8 9 10 11 12

See Legner, ‘Hirt, Guter Hirt’. Described by Eusebius of Caesarea in Vita Constantini, Book 3, Chapter XLIX. 1 Sam 17:34–7. See n. 1 of this contribution. In medieval art, the motif of the Good Shepherd did not disappear. The realisations of that subject, less known than their early Christian predecessors, tended to reflect the general tendencies of the time. In Romanesque art, the motif of the Good Shepherd was combined with typical representations of Christ in the mandorla (e. g. in the fresco decoration of the apse in San Vincenzo in Galliano, ca. 1007, where the Book, held by Christ, bears a signature: ‘pastor ovium bonus’); later it was commonly used as a part of decoration in psalters. In late Gothic art, the Good Shepherd was interestingly combined with the iconographical motif of vir dolorum (as can be seen in the early sixteenth century example from Germany).

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by Sebald Beham – which was made as one of the twenty-four illustrations to the Nuremberg edition of Ein seer Gut nützlich Bettbüchlein (the popular prayer book written by Martin Luther, first published in 1522) – depicting Christ as the Good Shepherd following the path to Golgotha (fig. 4) is still set in the late medieval tradition and corresponds to the iconographical hybrid of the Good Shepherd and the Man of Sorrows, which can be found in some late Gothic examples.13 However, the aspect of the Passion soon became somewhat veiled, and the forces of propaganda came to the fore. The criticism of the Catholic clergy was initially subtle: the woodcut by Hans Brosamer, probably the illustration of Hans Sachs’s Evangelium: Der gut hirt und böß hyrt, depicts very precisely the aforementioned passages in the Gospel of John.14 The polemical aspect is hidden in the figure of the hired hand, who runs away and abandons the sheep when he sees danger. Here, the hired hand can undoubtedly be identified as a Catholic cleric since he is wearing a characteristic headdress. More new elements can be tracked down in the text of Hans Sachs’s interpretation of the tenth chapter of the Gospel of John. The wolves were clearly identified as representatives of the papacy. The bipolar, antonymic thinking about the Good and the Bad Shepherd (the Anti-Shepherd) is also visible here. This piece by Sachs was used as a foundation for other artistic realisations of the motif of the Good Shepherd. In another illustration of Sachs’s Evangelium (fig. 5), the woodcut attributed to Monogrammist MS, the Catholic clerics are depicted as the ‘thieves and bandits’ who enter the sheepfold by the roof.15 The pope (as the AntiShepherd) blesses them. It is also worth mentioning that the sheepfold is depicted here in the form of a church building. It shows that in the interpretations of the time there was only one sheepfold, just as there is only one church. There are as yet no further sheepfolds. We cannot see a special one dedicated to the Catholics and another to the Lutherans. The good and the bad shepherds are striving for the same flock. The sheep have a choice but until they choose, they can still be seen as united. Quite similar in its meaning is another woodcut, which was initially accompanied by a written work by Hans Sachs. The graphic by Sebald Beham (executed even earlier, before Hans Sachs’s Evangelium was published) also 13 Friedrich W.H. Hollstein, Hollstein’s German Engravings, Etchings and Woodcuts, ca. 1400– 1700 (85 vols. to date; Amsterdam: Hertzberger, 1954–), vol. 3, edited by Beham, Sebald (1954), 169; Werner Hofmann (ed.), Luther und die Folgen für die Kunst. Katalog der Ausstellung, Hamburger Kunsthalle (10. 11. 1983–08. 01. 1984) (München: Prestel, 1983), n. cat. 107. 14 Heinrich Röttinger, Beiträge zur Geschischte des Sächsischen Holzschnittes (Cranach, Brosamer, Der Meister MS, Jakob Lucius aus Kronstadt) (Strasbourg: Heitz, 1921), 55; Scribner, For the Sake of Simple Folk, 51. 15 Röttinger, Beiträge zur Geschischte, 77; Walter L. Strauss, The German Single-Leaf Woodcut 1550–1600 (3 vols.; New York: Abaris Books, 1975), vol. 3, 1282; Hofmann (ed.), Luther und die Folgen für die Kunst, n. cat. 109; Scribner, For the Sake of Simple Folk, 53–4.

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depicts the sheepfold as a church building and the Catholic clergy as thieves and bandits; however, it also contains a subtle political feature.16 Beside the gate to the sheepfold, a person in a beret can be seen. The characteristic long chin leaves no doubt: it is Emperor Charles V himself, depicted here as ‘undecided’, still hesitating: to enter, or not to enter, to support the Reformation or not (we must remember that this was still the year 1524). However, what remains to be said about the shepherd himself ? Clearly, the first, most important and most necessary association that we must still bear in mind is the identification of the good shepherd with Christ. However, the ingenuity of sixteenth-century German artists went far beyond that. It soon turned out that there were more candidates for the title of ‘the Good Shepherds’: the figure of Christ can thus be understood as the ‘Arch-Shepherd’. Who were the others? The answer comes as no surprise: in the woodcut attributed to Monogrammist MS known under the characteristic title of Luther and Hus as the Good Shepherds (fig. 6), the Reformer from Wittenberg is seen standing among sheep under the cross, which recalls the way in which Saint John the Evangelist had usually been depicted.17 This simple trick leads our thoughts to the Gospel of John, in which the tenth chapter was, as we have already seen, the source of utmost importance for the artistic realisations of the motif of the Good Shepherd. Jan Hus is depicted standing behind the fence of the pasture. It recalls that he was the one who ‘prepared the way’ for Luther’s teachings. He was also the shepherd who had indeed sacrificed himself having been burnt at the stake in 1415, during the Council of Constance. The most important issue that we are dealing with here is the confirmation of the fact that the relations between Chapter 10 of the Gospel of John and Chapter 34 of the Book of Ezekiel were quite obvious for the sixteenth-century observer. The passage from the Book of Ezekiel was printed beneath the picture. The importance of the shepherd’s voice had already been emphasised in another woodcut, sometimes described as an original supplement to the aforementioned example with Luther and Hus.18 This woodcut, nowadays entitled The Papist Wolves, shows Martin Luther who, as a shepherd, is defending the flock in a very telling way: he is holding a quill as a weapon. Therein lies the

16 Scribner, For the Sake of Simple Folk, 51. 17 Strauss, The German Single-leaf Woodcut, vol. 3, 1291; Gerhard Bott (ed.), Martin Luther und die Reformation in Deutschland. Ausstellung zum 500. Geburtstag Martin Luthers, Germanisches Nationalmuseum, Nürnberg (25.06–25.08.1983) (Frankfurt a.M.: Insel, 1983), n. cat. 311, 246–7; Ansgar Reiß/Sabine Witt (ed.), Calvinismus. Die Reformierten in Deutschland und Europa (Dresden: Sandstein, 2009), n. cat. 0.5, 22. 18 Eckard Kluth/Harald Marx (ed.), Glaube & Macht: Sachsen im Europa der Reformationszeit. 2. Sächsische Landesausstellung, Torgau, Schloss Hartenfels 2004 (Dresden: Sandstein, 2004), n. cat. 131.

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way to defend: in the written Word, in the Scriptures, which, as we know, were translated by Luther himself. To summarise the concept of the attack of the wolves understood as the corrupt practices of the Catholic clergy, I should like to mention several typical illustrations, especially those in which the figure of the Good Shepherd was in the visual sense missing. In one of the woodcuts effected in Cranach’s workshop19 which initially served as a title page for Urbanus Rhegius’s Wie man die falschen Propheten erkennen, ja greiffen mag (fig. 7), we can see two semi-human creatures with wolves’ heads devouring a lamb.20 They are dressed in habits and captioned ‘Canonicus’ and ‘Monachus’. Below the picture, one can read the passage from the tenth chapter of the Book of Jeremiah: ‘For the shepherds are senseless, and do not inquire of the Lord; therefore they have not prospered, and all their flock is scattered’ (Jer 10:21).21 Similar in meaning, although expressed in a somewhat more sophisticated way, is one of Georg Pencz’s woodcuts, derived from Hans Sachs’s Sibnerley Anstöß der welt so dem menschen der Christum suchet begegnen (fig. 8).22 Among other episodes, we can see a group of pilgrims, following the path to Golgotha,23 struggling with the wild animals that ravage in the forest. Besides the wolf, such characteristic creatures as the lion and the goat can be seen. They are thought to represent Pope Leo X and Hieronymus Emser, respectively.24 In one of Matthias Gerung’s woodcuts, the spectrum of threats lurking for a Christian man in the first half of the sixteenth century had been extended: besides the ‘papal lion’, the ‘Turkish bear’ was also depicted.25 In this case we should recall the aforecited passage from the first Book of Samuel, where David talks about the shepherd’s fight with a lion and a bear. One of the most interesting examples of this animal symbolism is the title page to Hans Sachs’s Die Wittenbergisch nachtigall (fig. 9).26 We can see something quite unusual here:

19 More about the motif of the Good Shepherd in the art of the Cranach family in Joanna Kaz´mierczak, ‘Der Gute Hirte. Epitaphgemälde für Margarethe Drachstedt, geb. Major († 1573), und ihre Familie’, in Harasimowicz, Jan/Seyderhelm, Bettina (ed.), Cranachs Kirche. Begleitbuch zur Landesausstellung Sachsen-Anhalt: Cranach der Jüngere 2015 (Beucha: Sax Verlag 2015) 137–47; Kaz´mierczak, ‘How Can the Effects of Hearing Be Depicted?’. 20 Dieter Koepplin/Tilman Falk, Lukas Cranach. Gemälde, Zeichnungen, Druckgraphik (2 vols.; Basel/Stuttgart: Birkhäuser, 1974), vol. 1, n. cat. 267, 389. 21 ‘Die Hirten sind zu narren worden / und fragen nichts nach Gott / Darumb können sie auch nichts rechts leren / sondern zerstrewet die Herd’. 22 Bott (ed.), Martin Luther, n. cat. 312, 247–8. 23 Golgotha is also depicted here as the mountain of revelation: the depiction of Christ in the Winepress corresponds to the Adoration of the Mystic Lamb. 24 Emser had a goat’s head in his coat of arms and was therefore called Bock-Emser (‘GoatEmser’) by Luther. 25 Strauss, The German Single-Leaf Woodcut, vol. 1, 312. 26 Jutta Krauß/Günter Schuchardt/Albrecht Beutel (ed.), Aller Knecht und Christi Untertan. Der

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the ‘nightingale of Wittenberg’, who, as can be read in the title ‘is heard everywhere’,27 sings sitting in a tree. Below, the flock of sheep gathers, listening to its voice. However, amidst the boughs the wild animals (with wolves, the goat and the lion among them) are lying in wait. What is more, they are trying to drown the nightingale’s voice with their roars (their mouths are open). The importance of the voice, of verbum audibile, is very strongly emphasised here. Furthermore, at the bottom of the page, stands the passage from the Gospel of Luke: ‘I tell you, if these were silent, the stones will shout out’ (Luke 19:40).28 What is this song of the nightingale? The bird itself must of course be interpreted as a representation of Martin Luther, therefore the song could be taken as a reference to the Holy Scripture itself, as translated by the Wittenberg Reformer, or to his teachings, here, precisely, his sermons. This leads us to another question: the connection between the motif of the Good Shepherd and the pastor’s work. As we know, in Latin the word pastor literally means ‘shepherd’. Regarding the aforecited passage from the Book of Ezekiel (precisely the verse: ‘I will set up over them one shepherd, my servant’, Ezek 34:23), we can interpret the role of the ‘earthly shepherds’ (that is, the pastors) as some kind of ‘transmitters’ of the Word, which is given by the highest of the shepherds, who stands above them all. The most representative and telling example of such a treatment of the motif of the Good Shepherd are probably the title pages of the instructions for the church visitations for both the Electorate and the Duchy of Saxony (fig. 10), printed in Wittenberg in 1538 and 1539 accordingly, thought to have been designed in Cranach’s workshop.29

Conclusion In conclusion, looking from the modern perspective at the use of the motif of the Good Shepherd in the sixteenth century, and at the history of the Reformation in general, we can observe an interesting paradox. The sheep were divided because, paradoxically, the shepherds, or those who were thought to have become so, had been multiplied. Beneath the surface of the belief that there should be only one shepherd (or, as we have seen, one arch-shepherd and his earthly representatives) lay the bitter truth, that the idea of the one Church had been irretrievably lost. Mensch Luther und sein Umfeld. Katalog der Ausstellung zum 450. Todesjahr 1996, Wartburg und Eisenach (Eisenach: Wartburg-Stiftung, 1996), n. cat. 159, 223. 27 ‘Die Wittenbergisch nachtigall / di man yetzt höret uberall’. 28 ‘Ich sage ewch / wo dise sweygen / so werde di Steye rede’. 29 The woodcut is sometimes attributed to Monogrammist MS: see e. g. Ingrid Schulze, Lucas Cranach d. J. und die protestantische Bidlkunst in Sachsen und Thüringen (Bucha bei Jena: Quartus-Verlag, 2004), 207–9.

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When we look at all those attacks of wild animals and the shepherds fighting with the wolves, we can in fact almost smell the scent of the fear of losing Christian integrity. The sheep, indeed, have been scattered. It is therefore quite appropriate to end our reflections on the subject of the Good Shepherd with Christ’s words quoted in the tenth chapter of the Gospel of John, which have been recalled here so often: ‘I have other sheep that do not belong to this fold. I must bring them also, and they will listen to my voice. So there will be one flock, one shepherd’ (John 10:16).

Bibliography Bott, Gerhard (ed.), Martin Luther und die Reformation in Deutschland. Ausstellung zum 500. Geburtstag Martin Luthers, Germanisches Nationalmuseum, Nürnberg (25.06– 25.08.1983) (Frankfurt a.M.: Insel, 1983). Burkhardt, Johannes, Das Reformationsjahrhundert. Deutsche Geschichte zwischen Medienrevolution und Institutionenbildung 1517–1617 (Stuttgart: W. Kohlhammer Verlag, 2002). Hirner, René/Heinlein, Stefan (ed.), Vom Holzschnitt zum Internet. Die Kunst und die Geschichte der Bildmedien von 1450 bis heute (Ostfildern-Ruit: Cantz, 1997). Hofmann, Werner (ed.), Luther und die Folgen für die Kunst. Katalog der Ausstellung, Hamburger Kunsthalle (10.11.1983–08.01.1984) (München: Prestel, 1983). Hollstein, Friedrich W.H., Hollstein’s German Engravings, Etchings and Woodcuts, ca. 1400–1700 (85 vols. to date; Amsterdam: Hertzberger, 1954–), vol. 3, edited by Beham, Sebald (1954). Kaz´mierczak, Joanna, ‘Der Gute Hirte. Epitaphgemälde für Margarethe Drachstedt, geb. Major (†1573), und ihre Familie’, in Harasimowicz, Jan/Seyderhelm, Bettina (ed.), Cranachs Kirche. Begleitbuch zur Landesausstellung Sachsen-Anhalt: Cranach der Jüngere 2015 (Beucha: Sax Verlag, 2015) 137–47. Kaz´mierczak, Joanna, ‘How Can the Effects of Hearing Be Depicted? The Drachstedt Epitaph, the Good Shepherd and the Relations between Word and Image’, in Seyderhelm, Bettina (ed.), Cranach-Werke am Ort ihrer Bestimmung. Tafelbilder der Malerfamilie Cranach und ihres Umkreises in den Kirchen der Evangelischen Kirche in Mitteldeutschland (Regensburg: Verlag Friedrich Pustet, 2015) 311–20. Kluth, Eckard/Marx, Harald (ed.), Glaube & Macht: Sachsen im Europa der Reformationszeit. 2. Sächsische Landesausstellung, Torgau, Schloss Hartenfels 2004 (Dresden: Sandstein, 2004). Koepplin, Dieter/Falk, Tilman, Lukas Cranach. Gemälde, Zeichnungen, Druckgraphik (2 vols.; Basel/Stuttgart: Birkhäuser, 1974). Krauß, Jutta/Schuchardt, Günter/Beutel, Albrecht (ed.), Aller Knecht und Christi Untertan. Der Mensch Luther und sein Umfeld. Katalog der Ausstellung zum 450. Todesjahr 1996, Wartburg und Eisenach (Eisenach: Wartburg-Stiftung, 1996). Landau, David/Parshall, Peter W., The Renaissance Print 1470–1550 (New Haven/London: Yale University Press, 1994).

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Legner, Anton, ‘Hirt, Guter Hirt’, Lexikon der christlichen Ikonographie 2 (1970) 289–99. Reiß, Ansgar/Witt, Sabine (ed.), Calvinismus. Die Reformierten in Deutschland und Europa (Dresden: Sandstein, 2009). Rhegius, Urbanus, Wie man die falschen Propheten erkennen, ja greiffen mag (Wittenberg, 1539). Röttinger, Heinrich, Beiträge zur Geschischte des Sächsischen Holzschnittes (Cranach, Brosamer, Der Meister MS, Jakob Lucius aus Kronstadt) (Strasbourg: Heitz, 1921). Schulze, Ingrid, Lucas Cranach d. J. und die protestantische Bidlkunst in Sachsen und Thüringen (Bucha bei Jena: Quartus-Verlag, 2004). Scribner, Robert W., For the Sake of Simple Folk. Popular Propaganda for the German Reformation (Cambridge/New York: Cambridge University Press, 1981). Scribner, Robert W., ‘Reformatorische Bildpropaganda’, in Tolkemitt, Brigitte/Wohlfeil, Rainer (ed.), Historische Bildkunde. Probleme, Wege, Beispiele (Berlin: Duncker & Humblot, 1991) 83–106. Strauss, Walter L., The German Single-Leaf Woodcut 1550–1600 (3 vols.; New York: Abaris Books, 1975). Thulin, Oskar, Die Lutherstadt Wittenberg und ihre reformatorischen Gedenkstätten (Berlin: Evangelische Verlagsanstalt, 1962).

Sílvia Canalda i Llobet and Cristina Fontcuberta i Famadas

The Mystic Winepress: evolution, use and meaning of a controversial image at the time of the Reformation and Counter-Reformation1

Introduction The purpose of this paper – far from being an exhaustive list of artworks that depict the Mystic Winepress – is to carry out a comparative analysis of this image through a series of examples taken from the Catholic and the Protestant contexts in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. The idea for the paper took shape after two paintings depicting the Mystic Winepress were discovered in two convents belonging to the Order of St Clare Capuchin in areas that used to be territory belonging to the former Crown of Aragon (in Palma de Mallorca and Castellón, to be precise). After years of study, our knowledge of Spanish Golden Age art enabled us to recognise how exceptional this subject was and led us to follow a specific line of research that we have analysed and described in the present paper. We should like to begin by saying that the visual memory of the redemptive value of Christ’s sacrifice has generated countless iconographic subjects throughout the history of Christianity. The image of the Mystic Winepress is related to the cult of the Blood of Christ, a theological debate that reached its peak in the thirteenth century and at the time generated a number of iconographic subjects which accompanied the arrival of relics from the East and illustrated mystic tales. Images such as the Fountain of Life (fons pietatis), the Man of Sorrows and the Blood of Christ or the Redeemer were developed, which, although they may have the same meaning as the Winepress, lie outside the scope of this paper. Our interest was kindled by the visual cruelty of placing Christ inside a working winepress, his body bent under the pressure, his wounds running with blood. It is an arresting image even today, accustomed as we are to the 1 This study is part of the research project ‘Justicia y jucio: representaciones artísticas en la Cataluña medieval y moderna. Emplazamientos, programas iconógraficos, contextos y modelos’, under the direction of Rosa Alcoy i Pedrós and Cristina Fontcuberta, which is funded by the Ministerio de Economía y Competitividad de España.

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shocking realism of audiovisual media. Nevertheless, the simile of the body of Christ and the fruit of the vine appears in a number of passages in the Bible; it was not for nothing that the Lord offered the apostles his blood in the form of wine at the Last Supper, and it follows that the image of the Winepress may also be related to representations of the Tree of Jesse, the Tree of Life and the Wooden Cross. It would have been naïve to believe that this remarkable image had not been studied before. It appears briefly in studies on iconography by Émile Mâle (1908) and Maurice Vloberg (1946), but as early as 1936 Thomas devoted a monograph to the subject, and as recently as 1989 – to mark the restoration of a huge sculptural depiction in Recloses (France) – an international congress was held which stressed the universal character of the subject and looked at the various different ways in which it had been expressed in art throughout history, in miniatures, engravings, paintings, reliefs, stained-glass windows, embroidery, etc.2 Faced with this level of learning on the subject, our aim so far has been a humble one: to carry out a comparative analysis of the image looking at how an iconographic theme can be taken up in different places at the same time but has different meanings depending on the particular political, religious, social and cultural circumstances.

The Mystic Winepress: from its origins to the dawn of the modern era In the Recloses congress various papers tried to establish the iconographic origins of the Mystic Winepress, although no clear conclusion was reached as to whether the image was created through visual contagion from other similar themes or was the result of one theologian’s thoughts. In any event, it is an image built upon a biblical metaphor which has evolved over the course of the centuries from the narrative field to the devotional, and it is as a devotional image that it can be found at the dawn of the modern era. The image of the Mystic Winepress is sustained mainly by two passages from the Old Testament which were interpreted by the Church Fathers as foreshadowing both the Passion of Christ and the Sacrament of the Eucharist. In the Book of Numbers, the Children of Israel cut off a cluster of grapes and carry it upon a staff to a specific place in the land of Canaan (Num 13:17–24). Isaiah also 2 Danièle Alexandre-Bidon (ed.), Le pressoir mystique. Actes du colloque de Recloses (Paris: Cerf, 1990). For an almost complete list of bibliography on the Winepress see Angelo Loda, ‘Il torchio mistico: Cristo e la vite fra passione ed eucarestia’, Il sangue della redenzione. Rivista semestrale dei Missionari del Prez.mo Sangue 2 (2005), n. 1.

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speaks of ‘he who, red in apparel, treads the winepress alone’ (Isa 63:1–3). The inscription ‘TORCULAR CALCAVI SOLUS’ appears frequently in representations of the Winepress. The oldest known images are to be found in manuscripts from the twelfth century which illustrate – or interpret in picture form – these passages from the Old Testament. Both Vloberg and Perrine Mane believe that the visual genesis of the subject owes a great deal to a miniature of the Hortus Deliciarum by Herrad of Landsberg, a codex that has been destroyed, of which copies and descriptions survive, enabling its images to be reconstructed.3 The miniature showed Christ inside a winepress like a cluster of grapes while a deacon worked the lever and the ‘juice’ resulting from the pressure was watched over and distributed by members of the church. As far as can be understood from the description, the miniature not only alludes to the Passion but also to the mystery of transubstantiation. Miniatures with angels and Christ himself inside wine barrels can also be found in beatos with reference to, respectively, Revelation 14:194 and 19:15.5 In his De praeparatione ad missam,6 Saint Bonaventure (1221– 74) alluded to the nature of bread and wine.7 The image of the Mystic Winepress gradually took on an existence of its own, separate from the visual interpretation any exegete may have been led to make from the Holy Scriptures. Towards the end of the fourteenth century it was becoming common, especially in the north of Europe: the Low Countries, northern France, Germany and Switzerland. These were areas in which printing had developed to an extraordinary degree, thereby contributing to the diffusion of this very image. From the primitive school of Nuremberg to the Wierix family, a great many engravers and printers spread the image of the Mystic Winepress as a reminder of how salvation was possible through the suffering and death of Christ. This more immediate, bloody interpretation was helped in its development by the devotio 3 Maurice Vloberg, L’Eucharistie dans l’art (Grenoble/Paris: B. Arthaud, 1946) 174; Perrine Mane, ‘Le pressoir mystique dans les fresques et les miniatures médiévales’, in AlexandreBidon (ed.), Le pressoir mystique, 93–106; Herrad of Landsberg, Abbess of Hohenbourg, Hortus Deliciarum, edited by Green, Rosalie/Evans, Michael/Bischoff, Christine et al. (2 vols.; London/Leiden: The Warburg Institute/University of London/Brill, 1979). 4 ‘And the angel thrust in his sharp sickle into the earth, and gathered the vineyard of the earth, and cast it into the great press of the wrath of God’ (Rev 14:19). 5 ‘And out of his mouth proceedeth a sharp two edged sword; that with it he may strike the nations. And he shall rule them with a rod of iron; and he treadeth the winepress of the fierceness of the wrath of God the Almighty’ (Rev 19:15). 6 Tractatus brevis domini Bonaventure de modo se preparandi ad celebrandum missam (Roma: Eucharius Silber, 1500). 7 Saint Bonaventure, Tractatus de praeparatione ad missam, in Obras (6 vols.; Madrid: Biblioteca de Autores Cristianos, 1946–55), vol. 2, 587: ‘Pues el pan significa aquel cuerpo triturado, molido y amasado en la Pasión, cocido y asado con el fuego del amor divino en el horno y ara de la Cruz. Y el vino significa la sangre que fue exprimida en el lagar de la cruz de la uva, esto es, el Cuerpo de Cristo’.

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moderna religious tendency, the reform movement based on the imitation of Christ and the apostolic model of life. Once it became a devotional image, the Mystic Winepress undoubtedly enjoyed rapid popular acceptance as it had great visual force, to which was added an agricultural profile that applied to most of the population of Europe, and this would make it easily understood. With Christ shown standing or lying inside the winepress, artists, engravers and artisans had a wide range of figurative models from which to draw inspiration, from images of the crucifixion and the Road to Calvary to those of the deposition of Christ’s body in the sepulchre. As the origins of the subject are allegorical and therefore have no logical sequence in the life of Christ, he is represented just as often alive as dead or resurrected inside the winepress.

The fate and uses of the Mystic Winepress in Protestant Reformation art There is no doubt that the Mystic Winepress was a relatively popular iconographic subject in northern Europe until the start of the Reformation and even after the religious split had taken place, as many examples show. German clay moulds from around 1425 have been preserved in which Christ is shown standing in the winepress full of grapes with the juice, which is his blood, flowing into a chalice (fig. 11). An angel pushes down on the bar, while Christ himself turns the screw. The verse from Isaiah emerges from the mouth of Christ, making the words his own. A kneeling figure, probably the Virgin, prays at the scene, and God the Father appears among the stars.8 Similarly, the St.-Lorenz-Kirche in Nuremberg houses the monument erected in 1479 to the Stör family.9 We should also mention the painting belonging to the school of Dürer, in which there is also a reference to the Church in the administration of the sacrament with the figure of St Peter collecting in his chalice the hosts that fall from the press instead of blood.10 It is, therefore, an image of legitimacy of the power of the Church in the 8 This type of mould was used for making decorative reliefs and we find a metal one, for example, on a bell from Bisperode dating from 1540, as in Gabriele Finaldi, The Image of Christ (London: The National Gallery, 2000), 186, fig. 73. 9 Henri L.M. Defoer, ‘Pieter Aertsen: The Mass of St. Gregory with the Mystic Winepress’, Master Drawings 18/2 (1980) 139; Alois Thomas, Die Darstellung Christi in der Kelter: eine theologische und kulturhistorische Studie, zugleich ein Beitrag zur Geschichte und Volkskunde des Weinbaus (Du¨ sseldorf: Schwann, 21981), fig. 31. 10 Dürer also had a drawing on the subject, which is currently preserved at the Kupferstich Kabinett in Berlin. This work has been directly related to the above painting, of which it is assumed to be a sketch. See Walter L. Strauss, The Complete Drawings of Albrecht Dürer (6 vols.; New York: Abaris, 1974), vol. 2, 1072; Carolyn M. Carty, ‘Albrecht Dürer’s Adoration of

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distribution of salvation through the Eucharist; but it is also, as Marc Venard stated,11 a visual justification for the decision taken by Catholicism to impose communion under one kind. After some years, the debate on communion with the chalice resurfaced.12 Bearing in mind the fact that this image could still be found in areas affected by the new religions, what, then, was the fate of this iconographic theme in the Protestant world? In this essay we only wish to sketch some ideas that would require further exploration. Closely related to the image that concerns us is the debate about the Eucharist and transubstantiation that the Protestants took up as one of their main bones of contention. The argument was not only a theological one but affected the history of the image as the nature of the real and the symbolic needed to be established. This was an intense debate, which has received attention from scholars and which also implied the reconsideration of images of the Eucharist.13 Luther did not deny the mystery of the actual presence in the Eucharist but he also spoke specifically of the Mystic Winepress, which had a direct effect on how this image would evolve. In essays that he wrote between 1527 and 1529 on the subject of Isaiah, he deals with Chapter 63, where the expression ‘torcular calcavi solus’ is to be found (Isa 63:3). He rejects its traditional interpretation as foreshadowing the Passion of Christ and focusses only on verse 5: ‘And I looked, and there was none to help’ (Isa 63:5). The rest seems to him to be God announcing

the Trinity: A Reinterpretation’, The Art Bulletin 67/1 (1985) 146–53, on 151; Frank Müller, ‘Images eucharistiques dans l’art de la Réforme’, in Alexandre-Bidon (ed.), Le pressoir mystique, 172, n. 3; Thomas, Darstellung Christi, 142–3; Gherard Bott (ed.), Martin Luther und die Reformation in Deutschland. Ausstellung zum 500. Geburtstag Martin Luthers (Frankfurt a.M.: Insel, 1983), n. 465. For other Catholic examples from the north of Europe, see Gertrud Schiller, Iconography of Christian Art (2 vols.; London: Lund Humphries, 1972), 228–9; James Clifton/David Nirenberg/Linda E. Neagley, The Body of Christ in the Art of Europe and New Spain, 1150–1800 (München: Prestel, 1997), n. 54; Thomas, Darstellung Christi, especially 89– 162. 11 Marc Venard, ‘Le Sang du Christ: sang eucharistique ou sang relique?’, Tabularia 9 (2009) 1–12. 12 Ignasi Fernández Terricabras, ‘Fernando I y la tercera etapa del Concilio de Trento’, in Alvar, Alfredo (ed.), Socialización, vida privada y actividad pública de un Emperador del Renacimiento. Fernando I, 1503–1564 (Madrid: Sociedad estatal de commemoraciones culturales, 2004) 389–408. 13 Lee P. Wandel (ed.), A Companion to the Eucharist in the Reformation (Leiden: Brill, 2014), see especially Part Four, ‘The Art of the Liturgy’. For some examples of eucharistic images that express Lutheran ideas on it, see Müller, ‘Images eucharistiques’, 180–3, fig. 87; Robert W. Scribner, For the Sake of Simple Folk. Popular Propaganda for the German Reformation (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1994), 206–7; Joseph L. Koerner, The Reformation of the Image (Chicago/London: University of Chicago Press, 2004), 310–15, 345–57. According to Christensen, as regards the theme of the Last Supper, ‘within the scope of German altarpiece art the sixteenth-century Protestants were the first ever to exploit fully the eucharistic symbolism of this subject’; see Carl C. Christensen, Art and the Reformation in Germany (Athens: Ohio University Press, 1979), 162.

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the final punishment of the Jews, guilty of not having believed in Christ.14 Calvin also referred to the Mystic Winepress, but interpreted the biblical text in a different way. In an essay on Isaiah that appeared in 1551, he also interpreted it as prophesying the punishment of God’s enemies, but in a chapter on the sacrament entitled ‘De sacrificio missae’, in a text from 1549, Calvin focusses on the same passage ‘torcular calcavi solus’ to stress the word solus and show that the sacrifice of Christ on the cross is a unique act and that it is aberrant to want to repeat it in the mass. In Calvin, therefore, the Winepress takes on an anti-eucharistic sense by dissociating the Passion and the sacrament. As Müller points out, the theme has not only been distanced from its traditional meaning but can also be used against the Catholic Church.15 For the followers of Zwingli and the spiritualists, the bread and wine could be nothing more than symbols, reminders of the Last Supper and Christ’s sacrifice. Taking into account the theological changes proposed by the Reformers, it would have been difficult to adapt this image to the new doctrine. Despite this, however, it did not completely disappear. For example, one of Luther’s sermons of 1520, published in Leipzig by Valentin Schumann, in which he denies the sacrificial character of the mass but maintains the presence of Christ in the bread and wine, is illustrated with a woodcut by Heinrich Vogtherr the Elder (1490– 1556); it does not, however, appear to reflect this change in theological thinking. The reason for this is that the engraving was made prior to 1518 and the opportunity was taken to use it in the edition of 1520 as the engraver had had to hand over the wooden matrices. Indeed this was normal practice at the start of the Reformation, so new ideas can be found illustrated with old Catholic images. Thus, although the chalice with the blood of Christ could just as well represent Luther’s ideas on the Eucharist, there is no visual allusion to the denial that the sacrifice is renewed on a daily basis, and therefore a certain ambiguity exists with regard to the text because the illustration was reused. In this first stage of the Reformation we also find the image of the Winepress illustrating a prediction by Johann Grünpeck in 1522, in which the vine represents the Church and the popular image of Christ in the press likewise illustrates the idea of the real presence of Christ’s blood in the wine of the Eucharist.16 The image of the Winepress appears in two different editions of the Lutheran Bible. The first was printed in Wittenberg in 1550 by Hans Lufft with engravings by Hans Brosamer. In the illustration of Isaiah’s prophecy (Isa 6:1–2), Christ 14 Luther adds: ‘They have falsely interpreted this text as referring to the Passion, they have made a painting of Christ in the winepress, also with a lamb, but it is an absurdity. Here the winepress signifies the punishment itself, the massacre, the disaster, where the cities burn, where they kill him. As in the Apocalypse’ (Müller, ‘Images eucharistiques’, 184). 15 Ibid., 185. 16 Scribner, For the Sake of Simple Folk, 192–3, fig. 159.

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appears in the press near the temple while in the foreground an apostle – St Paul, according to Lambert – with his arms extended, represents the link between Christ and men. However, in another edition from 1565, illustrated by Jost Amman, which relates the story of God’s grape harvest from the Apocalypse of St John (Rev 14:18–20), the press is no longer shown but merely the vat in which one angel treads the grapes and another collects the wine.17 This is therefore an iconographic variation on the theme. In point of fact, variations on the theme of the Mystic Winepress would appear in other instances, such as in the 1532 engraving by Erhard Schön, which illustrated a poem by the humanist Hans Sachs and used the theme of God’s vine in a clearly critical tone against the Catholic Church. The poem is a complaint from God and, in order to teach the reader how to distinguish between the true and the false religion, the image presents a clear antithesis between Catholic and Protestant behaviour. While the Catholics harvest devotional objects from their vine, the Lutheran preacher with his flock points to a crucifix as the true fruit of the vine. From the foot of the crucifix emerges water which irrigates the plants. Although the press does not make an appearance, for Scribner this type of crucifix comes from images of Christ in the Winepress, and whereas previously the wine that emerged represented the wine of the communion, here it signified the water of baptism, ‘a remodelling of a traditional Catholic symbol’.18 It seems that it is not until the second stage of the Reformation that the images are adapted to the ideas of the new confession and the ambiguity of early works disappears. There is now clear representation of the idea that salvation is based on the Word of Christ, which passes directly to the faithful without an institutionalised sacrament.19 The Reformation movement clearly preferred other images in order to explain their ideas. According to Müller, an example of this ‘achievement’ was an engraving by Cranach in which Luther and Hus appear giving communion to the elector of Saxony and his family. Being an eminently eucharistic image, the work, dating from the mid–century, states visually the three sacraments that Luther defended: communion, baptism and confession.20 17 See both examples in Gisèle Lambert, ‘Étude iconographique du thème du pressoir mystique à travers la gravure du XVe au XXe siècle’, in Alexandre-Bidon (ed.), Le pressoir mystique, 116– 17, fig. 49; 125, fig. 54. 18 Scribner, For the Sake of Simple Folk, 191. Schön was probably inspired by Grünpeck’s work. Thus, the traditional iconography of the Press is reused. 19 This can be found in some engravings of the Mill of the Host, for example, a theme very close to that of the Winepress since it referred to the transformation of Christ’s body into bread, and therefore also to the Eucharist and transubstantiation. Secondary bibliography on the Mill can be found in Loda, ‘Il torchio mistico’, 33, n. 4; Thomas, Darstellung Christi, 163–9; Scribner, For the Sake of Simple Folk, 104–7. 20 Frank Müller, Art, religion et société dans l’espace germanique au XVIe siècle (Strasbourg: Presses universitaires de Strasbourg, 1997), 180–3, fig. 87.

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Although the Mystic Winepress was not an iconographic theme widely used by the new confessions born out of the Reformation, some examples show that the old image could be useful to illustrate religious messages. The iconography nonetheless undergoes a process of adaptation to the new theological ideas. The image of the Winepress appears in the engraving by Georg Pencz, which was used to illustrate some other verses by Sachs entitled The Seven Obstacles on the Christian’s Way to Salvation or The Old Law and the New (fig. 8); it includes Lutheran thought and could be related to the Epistles of St Paul to the Corinthians (2 Cor 3:5–6). In their search for salvation, the pilgrims follow the road from the Old Law, represented by Moses on Mount Sinai on the left-hand side of the engraving, to the Resurrection on the right. After undergoing a number of trials such as the attack by Catholics in the form of wild beasts, one of them points out the road they should follow, which is the blood of Christ flowing out of the winepress, and there they rid themselves of their sins before arriving at Mount Zion, where they surround the resurrected Christ, with the Lamb of God depicted at the top of the scene. The text makes its meaning and function even clearer as an image of redemption: the sinners find salvation thanks to their search for faith and truth in Christ, and there are no intermediaries between man and Christ. In this case, satire is combined with the teaching of the doctrine itself and, as in some Reform works, the Catholics are ridiculed.21 It is probable that the echoes of this image survive in other works, but this is an hypothesis that needs to be studied. To mention one example found in other Protestant territories: in his drawing for a print of 1596, the great biographer Karel van Mander depicted Christ under a large rectangular winepress plate with a cross carried nearly upright on his shoulder ‘in triumph’ (fig. 12). It was engraved by Jacques de Gheyn II and Zacharias Dolendo, who was also the publisher of the series of the Passion in 1597. Van Mander included it as the title page of the series and scholars have pointed out its rarity within Netherlandish art.22 It is also interesting that both artists produced images for both the Catholic and Calvinist public, and their 21 See Lambert, ‘Étude iconographique’, 120, fig. 50. Satire also appears in a 1586 pamphlet by Swiss artist Bernhard Jobin, in which the only changes made were to the text, now attacking the Jesuits. The same image was used as in the original, an engraving by Michael Peterle dedicated to Rudolf II for the Society of Jesus of Prague, in which the Press retains its traditional Catholic sense (Lambert, ‘Étude iconographique’, 123–5, fig. 53). In the ‘Reform’ version, therefore, the satire is contained only in the text but still distorts the original meaning of the work. 22 Huigen Leeflang/Christian Schuckman (ed.), Karel van Mander, compiled by Leesberg, Marjolein (Rotterdam/Amsterdam: Sound & Vision/Rijksprentenkabinet, Rijksmuseum Amsterdam, 1999), xxix. Van Mander incorporated three short biblical quotations in the decorative framework. He conceived this series in the same year that Goltzius designed his own ambitious Passion series and they are the result of an amicable competition.

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prints ‘did not reflect the religious convictions of the designer and publisher, but were intended to cater to groups of various religious persuasions’,23 and the Winepress may have been one of these images. However, the drawing with the Catholic Mystic Winepress by Jacob Cornelisz preserved in Berlin, probably the model for an altarpiece, emphasises the role of the pope and the Catholic Church as administrators of the Eucharist, and demonstrates that the iconography at hand was not entirely unknown in the northern Netherlands, although detailed compositions of this variety concerning the Mystic Winepress appear to be found mainly in northern France and southern Netherlands.24 Considering the examples and studies to date, the Winepress survived in the Protestant world mainly as an image of redemption, referring to salvation through Christ. This is the meaning of the Winepress that appears in the upper part of the title page of a 1641 Lutheran Bible printed in Nuremberg by Wolfgang Endter, commissioned by Duke Ernst of Saxony-Weimar and reprinted a number of times (fig. 13). Next to the title there are images taken from the Old and New Testament, from Adam to St John, and an enormous crowd, the forty-four thousand chosen who are referred to in the Apocalypse (Rev 7:14), which says ‘They have washed their robes and made them white with the blood of the Lamb’. The quote from Zechariah (3:12) and especially the one from Hebrews (9:14) both exalt the Blood of Christ’s sacrifice, and more force is given to the impression of the Final Judgement, where the Christ of the Winepress – victorious over death and the Devil – anointed the chosen with his redeeming blood. With this victory to save mankind, an allusion is also made to the Fountain of Life. Christ resurrected appears in the lower part, surrounded by the evangelical community, showing the Word of God. But Christ as judge is not present, only Christ the Saviour, and therefore the message of redemption through faith alone – the immediacy of man’s salvation through Christ, according to the Lutheran interpretation – is explicit in the image.25 Echoes of the engraving can be found in some German paintings, such as in an epitaph to Konrad Lemmer and his wife at St.-Stephani-Kirche at Calbe dated to 1654. A known philologist and historian, Lemmer had been pastor of St.-Stephani-Kirche since 1645. The composition of the painting derives directly from the Bible’s frontispiece, in which Christ in the Press stands in the centre and fights 23 Ger Luijten (ed.), The De Gheyn family, compiled by Filedt Kok, Jan Piet/Leesberg, Marjolein (Rotterdam/Amsterdam: Sound & Vision/Rijksprentenkabinet, Rijksmuseum Amsterdam, 2000), xxxiii. 24 Defoer, ‘Pieter Aertsen’, 139–40, fig. 5. 25 For futher information, see Thomas, Die Darstellung; Lambert, ‘Étude iconographique’, 123; Horst Wenzel, ‘The Logos in the Press: Christ in the Wine-Press and the discovery of printing’, in Starkey, Kathryn/Wenzel, Horst (ed.), Visual Culture and the German Middle Ages. The New Middle Ages (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2005) 236–9.

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against the Devil. Another painting after the title-page is the altarpiece in the church of Hedwig Pless in the Polish Upper Silesia. Compared to the Bible, the lower part is missing but a serpent of bronze instead of the signature’s panel is included.26 The third example is to be found on the wall painting in the St.-VeitKirche at Gärtringen, in Baden-Wüttemberg, which represents a much more simplified version of the original iconography (ca. 1665). These examples demonstrate a certain degree of continuity of the iconography of Christ in the Press fighting against the Devil in the territories of the Reformation, but these works and the probably ‘popular’ dissemination of the image need to be studied in greater detail in order for a proper conclusion to be drawn on its spread in the Protestant world.27

Reflections on the image in the Catholic world When Europe was splitting up into different religions, all the indications are that the country that made the most use of the Mystic Winepress image was France, which happened to be a victim of the religious dispute. In northern France, as was already mentioned at the beginning of this paper, the Winepress had a long iconographic and literary tradition, being a metaphor for the Passion and appearing fairly frequently in sermons from the thirteenth century onwards. Even so, it still comes as a surprise to see the grand scale on which it was used in northern France for about a century – starting from the second/third decade of the sixteenth century – with the image of the Winepress occupying whole stainedglass windows over two metres high. Bernard Violle28 identified seven images of the Winepress in both lay and regular French churches, but a thorough search through the Corpus Vitrearum may easily increase this number, with some of the smaller examples being found in places such as museums. Nevertheless, it is 26 Thomas, Die Darstellung, 131–3. 27 The image of the Mystic Winepress also appears on the title page of an English Protestant Bible, which surprises most, given the scarcity of this iconography in England. See a reproduction in Arthur S. Herbert, Historical catalogue of printed editions of the English Bible, 1525–1961. Revised and expanded from the edition of T.H. Darlow and H.F. Moule, 1903, by A.S. Herbert (London/New York: British & Foreign Bible Society/American Bible Society, 1968), n. 289, n. 466. It is also an image of redemption. It must be said that, while this iconography is very scarce in the English visual arts, it is present in the literature of modern times, and also, as Franssen explains, becomes more important in the seventeenth century, in the Anglican and Puritan literature, although Protestant poets, in principle, did not accept the eucharistic implications of the Press. See Paul Franssen, ‘Le pressoir mystique dans la littérature anglaise’, in Alexandre-Bidon (ed.), Le pressoir mystique, 187–95. 28 Bernard Violle, ‘Le pressoir mystique sur les vitraux’, in Alexandre-Bidon (ed.), Le pressoir mystique, 129–51.

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interesting to consider this process whereby the image was used in works of very large format in the public sphere in the France of that era. Undoubtedly one of the most exceptional examples of this use of the Winepress still in existence – bearing in mind the fragility of stained glass – is in the church of Saint-Étienne-du-Mont in Paris, the parish church of the university and custodian of the city’s patron saint (fig. 14). Although made in 1618, it appears to have been inspired by an extant work in the church of Saint-Hilaire in Chartres from a century before (1527–30). The great variety and low cost of engraving made it easy for figurative subjects to make the transition between artistic works and languages.29 The outstanding iconography of the stained glass in Paris points to an engraving by Jacques Lalouette (ca. 1570)30 as a possible source of inspiration. In these French works, the biblical metaphor of the Winepress is once again interpreted as a narrative. In Saint-Étienne-du-Mont the body of Christ is lying on a horizontal winepress; once it has been pressed and strained, his blood gushes from a spout.31 In the very centre of the stained-glass window, this scene divides the composition into two halves. In the distance – the upper part – the Old Testament patriarchs work in the vineyard, while in the lower part – the foreground as far as the viewer is concerned – angels and apostles transfer the blood of Christ (the main role of St Peter is clear), which is stored in barrels by the four Fathers of the Latin Church under the watchful eye of ecclesiastic prelates – bishops and pontiff – and the civil authorities – princes and monarch. On a card we read: ‘Heureux homme chrétien si tu crois que Dieu pour te sauver a souffert à la croix et que les sacraments retenus à l’Eglise’. Despite its iconographic complexity, the meaning of the image is clear: the fruits of the Old Testament survive thanks to the sacrifice of Christ, which is cared for and administered by the Church. If the meaning of this work is considered together with all the neighbouring stained glass as a whole, we can see that this is a set exalting the Eucharist, since the other themes represented are Abraham and the Three Angels, the Offering of Melchizedek, Manna from Heaven and the Adoration of the Holy Sacrament. Although the compositions 29 Françoise Gatouillat, ‘L’utilisation des modèles graphiques, dans le vitrail parisien du début du XVIe siècle’, in Herold, Michel/Mignot, Claude (ed.), Vitrail et arts graphiques, XVe–XVIe siècles. Actes de la table ronde des 29 et 30 mai 1997 (Paris: École nationale du Patrimoine, 1999) 151–68. 30 A copy is held in the Département des estampes at the Bibliothèque nationale de France. The engraving has also been related to a unique painting of the Winepress in Italian art as it represents an allegory of the Church’s saving mission. It is preserved in the parish of San Michele Arcangelo in Nava di Colle Brianza, in Lombardy. See Angelo Loda, ‘Un’inedita raffigurazione del torchio mistico nel comasco’, Solchi 2/1 (1998) 21–5. 31 On both sides of the winepress a long inscription begins with the words ‘Ce pressoir fut la Vénérable croix / Ou la sang fu le Nectar de la Vie…’. The comparison between the press and the cross, as well as its relation to the Fons vitae, are recurring themes.

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are completely different, similar iconographic sets that include large-scale representations of the Mystic Winepress can be found in the church of Sainte-Foy in Conques (1522) and in Troyes Cathedral (1625–8). During the struggle between Catholicism and Protestantism in France, the image of the Mystic Winepress once again took on the eucharistic meaning, defending both the real presence of Christ in the sacrament and the renovation and daily renewal of his sacrifice thanks to the mediating role of the Church.32 The images we have mentioned, therefore, illustrate a specific doctrinal interpretation and even use some of the communication resources spread by the Reformers, while simultaneously trying to protect themselves from persistent and forceful criticism. Certain figures in the field of history today stress the similarities rather than the differences between advocates of the Reformation and Papists as far as social discipline, for example, is concerned.33 The set of images in the Paris church has a clear catechetic function; apart from the public dimension of the work, long inscriptions in the vernacular explain the meaning of each stained-glass window. The relationship between text and image was one of the communication strategies most used in Reformation art. Faced with accusations of idolatry and iconoclastic destruction, certain French theologians reflected upon the function and the characteristics of the holy image, anticipating in terms of time and concept the last session of the Council of Trent.34 Hence for example Claude d’Espence (1511–71) recommended using the holy image as a mural in order to avoid all sorts of popular practices suspected of idolatrous adoration, such as the gift of jewels or clothes. The iconographic sets of stained glass in French churches during the sixteenth century reflect concerns over doctrine and communication during this time of upheaval. Emile Mâle, no great admirer of this iconographic theme, was surprised by how little the image of the Mystic Winepress was used in Habsburg Spain. Manuel Trens wrote in similar terms in the only study Hispanic historiography has ever devoted to this theme before our own contributions.35 Going back to the be32 On one of the many inscriptions accompanying the depiction of the Winepress on the ensemble of Saint-Étienne du Mont, the following text can be read: ‘Tous vrais Crestiens le doiuent recevoir / Avec respect des Prebtres (sic) de l’Eglise, / Mais il convient premierement avoir / L’ame constriste, et la coulpe remise’. It constitutes a clear reference to the universal right of the Eucharist after confession, repentance and contrition. 33 R. Po-chia Hsia, ‘Disciplina social y catolicismo en la Europa de los siglos XVI y XVII’, Manuscrits. Revista d’Història Moderna 25 (2007) 29–43. 34 Olivier Christin, Une révolution symbolique. L’iconoclasme huguenot et la reconstruction catholique (Paris: Éditions de Minuit, 1991). 35 Manuel Trens, La eucaristía en el arte español (Barcelona: Aymá, 1952), 180–1; Sílvia Canalda i Llobet/Cristina Fontcuberta i Famadas, ‘El “lagar mistico” en época moderna. Evolución, uso y significados en una imagen controvertida’, in Congreso Internacional Imagen Apariencia. Noviembre 19, 2008–Noviembre 21, 2008 (Murcia: Universidad de Murcia y Editum,

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ginning of this paper, apart from the two paintings we mentioned belonging to the Order of St Clare Capuchin, we have only been able to locate a few examples throughout the country, in Santiago de Compostela, Orense, Briones (La Rioja), Burgo de Osma (Soria) and Córdoba, although our intention has not so far been to compile a complete inventory. In addition to the scarcity of the theme – and tempting fate by commenting on the subject before our research has even been completed – none of the examples found were by renowned artists, and they could be described as being of mediocre quality intended for local exhibition. Although most of the works are not well-known, their format prevents us from carrying out a thorough iconographic analysis of them all. We would, however, like to point out that a fair proportion of the paintings found derive directly or indirectly from an engraving by Hieronymus Wierix (1533–1699), this being further confirmation of the importance engravings had in the process of artistic creation during the modern age (fig. 15). Indeed, it was in the Low Countries towards the beginning of the sixteenth century that a definite image of the Mystic Winepress was created which, with little variation, was used and reused until the nineteenth century thanks to its widespread availability as a print. The Hieronymus Wierix example is a good illustration of this, although some authors – such as Thomas and Vloberg – argue that it was derived from a no longer existing painting from the town of Baralle in the French department of Pas-deCalais.36 Hence, following the model made by the engraver from Antwerp, the paintings in Burgo de Osma and Córdoba are characterised by their representation of Christ standing inside the winepress treading the grapes, carrying the cross – now a beam – on his shoulder, while God the Father works the screw of the winepress. The characters shown gathered around this central group may vary, but in the lower part there are usually two angels dressed in white, in clear allusion to the Eucharist,37 who, like acolytes, bear the chalice in which to receive such precious juice. The Virgin Mary also appears, with or without the daggers that symbolise her suffering, thereby making her part of the story of redemption, 2009); Sílvia Canalda i Llobet/Cristina Fontcuberta i Famadas, ‘La prensa mística o el lagar místico en época moderna: usos y controversias alrededor de una imagen contundente’, in Canalda i Llobet, Sílvia/Narváez, Carme/Sureda, Joan (ed.), Cartografías visuales y arquitectónicas de la modernidad: Siglos XV–XVIII (Barcelona: Edicions i Publicacions de la Universitat de Barcelona, 2011) 187–207. 36 Thomas, Darstellung Christi, 121–2; Vloberg, Eucharistie dans l’art, 177. This work was destroyed during World War II. A close relation between the painting and Hieronymus Wierix’s engraving may be inferred from the preserved copies of the painting. Vetter conjectured a reverse influence, namely from the Flemish print on the painting. It is, however, of no use to attempt to solve the riddle, see Ewald M. Vetter, Die Kupferstiche zur Psalmodia Eucaristica des Melchior Prieto von 1622 (Münster: Aschendorff, 1972), 273–5. 37 Maurice B. McNamee, Vested Angels: Eucharistic Allusions in Early Netherlandish Paintings (Leuven: Peeters Publishers, 1998).

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together with some apostles – one of whom was nearly always St Peter – carrying the grapes. The active participation of God the Father turning the screw of the winepress is the subject of a detailed analysis by Boespflug.38 The inclusion in the Córdoba painting of the souls from Purgatory has recently been explained by Francisco Manuel Carmona Carmona from a double point of view: on the one hand, bearing in mind the historical period in which it was produced, as doctrinal defence of the space occupied by the souls awaiting eternal salvation,39 and, on the other, by virtue of its commissioner, Juan Jacinto de Góngora (depicted in the lower part of the painting), founder and juror of the Cofradía penitencial de las Almas, housed in the church from which the painting originated (the no longer existing church of San Nicolás y San Elogio in Axerquía).40 Slightly further away from this prototype is the painting in the monastery of the Purísima Concepción in Palma de Mallorca (fig. 16). The positioning and body language of Christ’s body are similar to those seen in the paintings mentioned above, descendants of the design by Wierix, although here the cross of the rectangular structure of the winepress, bearing down on his shoulder, is much more clearly distinguishable. This time it is God the Father and the Holy Spirit, both personified and dressed in cloak and diadem, who make the upper part of the press descend.41 The identity and nature of the figures working the press are explained by the inscriptions ‘OMNIPOTENTIA PATRIS AETERNI’ and ‘AMOR IMMENSUS SPIRITUS SANCTI’, which at the same time justify such terrible torment. The body of Christ bends dramatically under the pressure, causing tears to spring from his eyes and blood to pour from his wounds. With the wisdom of being the Only Begotten Son of God, he speaks the words: ‘TORCULAR CALCAVI SOLUS; EGO SUM HOSTIUM SI QUIS PER ME INTRAVERIT SALVERIT’. Added to the prophetic line from Isaiah (‘I have trodden the winepress alone’) is a verse from St John: ‘I am the gate. Whoever comes in by me will be saved’ (John 10:9). Christ resigns himself to the pain in return for conditional salvation. The acolyte angels, which in other paintings look after Christ’s blood, are here substituted by two allegorical figures, also dressed in white, situated to the left of the 38 François Boespflug, Dieu dans l’art. Sollicitudini Nostrae de Benoît XIV (1745) et l’affaire Crescence de Kaufbeuren (Paris: Cerf, 1984). 39 In a recent article by Alessandra Pasolini new examples are given, with the souls of Purgatory in the lower part of the representation, coming from the island of Sardinia, see Alessandra Pasolini, ‘L’iconografia della fontana mistica in età moderna’, in Cadinu, Marco (ed.), Ricerche sulle Architetture dell’Acqua in Sardegna. Researches on Water-Related Architecture in Sardinia (Wuppertal: Steinhäuser Verlag) 103–24, on 117–8. 40 Francisco M. Carmona Carmona, ‘La “prensa mística” como redención de las almas del Purgatorio. A propósito del lienzo de la Iglesia de San Francisco de Córdoba’, Revista de estudios de ciencias sociales y humanidades 30 (2013) 65–78. 41 François Boespflug, ‘Dieu en pape: une singularité de l’art religieux de la fin du Moyen Âge’, Revue Mabillon 2 (1991) 167–205.

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picture. One angelic figure, index finger pointing to the sacrifice of God as Man, warns the girl kneeling at its feet: ‘NEMO VENIT AD PATREM NISI PER FILIUM’ (‘No one goes to the Father but by the Son’, John 14:6). The young girl, crowned, weeping, her heart inflamed, says: ‘NON EST QUI RECOGITET CORDE’ (‘No man layeth to heart’, Jer 12:11). Both figures can be interpreted as symbols: the first symbolising salvation and the second symbolising mankind. These are allegories that are found fairly frequently in existentialist Spanish paintings of the seventeenth century, known as Vanitas. The angelic figure holds a crown in its right hand. This image brings to mind, for example, an allegory of the salvation by Juan de Valdés Leal painted around 1660, part of the York Art Gallery collection.42 In the Seville painting, an angel warns a reading believer of the passing of time, while with its right hand it points towards a golden crown with the inscription: ‘QUAM REPROMISIT DEUS’. In the painting by Valdés Leal and in the Winepress canvas, this crown alludes to the Epistle of St James: ‘Happy are those who remain faithful under trials, because when they succeed in passing such a test, they will receive as their reward the [crown of] life which God has promised to those who love him’ (Jas 1:12–13). In the Mallorca painting, therefore, the crown is the significant element in the allegory of salvation. Towards the bottom of the picture, the blood of Christ – the mystery of the redemption – is collected and distributed in a cask inscribed ‘SACRAMENTA SACRATISSIMA’, while it pours through a number of spouts symbolising the sacraments: ‘PAENITENTIA, AECHARISTIA, ORDO, EXTREMA UNTIO, MATRIMONIUM’. The foreshortened figure of a skeleton situated in the foreground reminds us of what lies in wait for those who do not follow the model of Christian life: Death. The cold light and skilful colouring together with the threatening sky and the barrenness of the landscape – enlivened only by the arma christi – are all elements deliberately designed to make the viewer feel greater respect for Christ’s sacrifice. It should be remembered that the painting can still be found in the convent of the Capuchin sisters in Palma; it is even possible that one of the inscriptions may correspond to an antiphon sung or prayed, depending on the service.43 This painting, for the time being anonymous and of average quality artistically, is probably based on an as yet unidentified engraving. As a matter of fact, Angelo Loda points out the uniqueness of one of them. However, it is certainly an image of the Mystic Winepress which alludes to redemption through Christ’s sacrifice and to salvation through the practice of the Catholic sacraments. The eucharistic communion – though present – has no 42 Enrique Valdivieso, Valdés Leal (Madrid: Ministerio de Cultura/Museo del Prado/Junta de Andalucía, 1991), 176–7, n. 50. 43 Juan F. Esteban Lorente argues that Isaiah’s text – one of the main literary sources for the image of the Mystic Winepress – was incorporated into the service held on Good Friday; see Juan F. Esteban Lorente, Tratado de iconografía (Madrid: Istmo, 1990), 239.

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relevant role in the interpretation of this work; the mystery of transubstantiation is neither questioned nor defended. It is not a doctrinal or catechetic image, but more likely a devotional one – like the other representations of the Mystic Winepress found in Spain – aimed at increasing the piety of a small audience. A similar interpretation may be argued for the only Hispanic version known to date of the depiction of the winepress horizontally, a painting attributed to Francisco Ribalta (fig. 17).44 One of the most representative examples of the Valencian naturalistic school of the first three decades of the seventeenth century, Ribalta depicts the winepress in a way similar to the miniature included in the French-Bourgogne Book of Hours of Guillaume Rollin (ca. 1465–79), now held in the Biblioteca Nacional de España.45 In the painting, Christ is depicted leaning on the press with a sorrowful face and with his eyes directed at the beholder. His blood covers the bottom of the rectangular barrel whilst dripping into a golden chalice which is lying on the floor. Accentuated by the realistic depiction of his anatomy and the pale light of the miniature, Christ’s solitary sorrow stands in sharp contrast to the pair of colourful and idealised angels which, at the top of the miniature, unfold a phylactery bearing the inscription ‘QVIS NON POSSET CONTRISTARI’. The purpose of such inscription was doubtless to set an empathic relation with the beholder and to arise pathos, for the text asks who would not feel sorrow before the event portrayed, even though a cultivated beholder would immediately identify the passage in the Stabat Mater,46 a prayer written in the thirteenth century describing Mary’s sorrow before the cross. Such an allusion to the Eucharist, in the presence of the chalice, does not rule out interpreting this new version of the Winepress in an intimate and redeeming manner. Yet again, the visual image may have accompanied a specific practice connected to the liturgy. The interpretation of this iconographic theme in Spain is very similar to the one found in Italian Renaissance and Baroque arts. The Winepress was the subject of Angelo Loda’s PhD dissertation, focussing on eucharistic imagery and

44 We saw this work in an exhibition held in Paris some years ago; see François Pannier/ Françoise Wang-Toutain/Françoise Pommaret (ed.), La danse des morts: Citipati de l’Himalaya, danses macabres et vanités de l’Occident: exposition du 15 septembre au 30 octobre 2004, Galerie Le toit du monde, Paris (Suilly-la-Tour: Findakly, 2004), 93, n. 53. Measuring 158x118 cm, the painting was purchased by a private Spanish collector, the owner of a large collection of ethnographical and artistic objects related to wine production. 45 The painting, in shades of grey only, with Christ in the Winepress, can be found on Biblioteca Nacional de España, Ms. Res/149, fol. 229v. 46 The text of the third stanza of the Stabat Mater reads: ‘Quis est homo qui non fleret, / Matrem Christi si videret / In tanto supplicio? / Quis non posset contristari, / Piam matrem contemplari / Dolentem cum filio?’.

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the representation of Christ’s Blood.47 Loda concludes that the Mystic Winepress did not enjoy a wide dissemination in Italy and was limited to the north of the country, an area more receptive to central European models. Loda also makes a clear distinction between popular versions, most of which are inspired by Hieronymus Wierix, which are later in time and present a varied typology, and another group of more doctrinal versions, which can be dated to the late fifteenth century and are largely connected to the Order of St Augustine. The latter group would include the examples of Bergognone (in the church of Santa Maria Incoronata in Milan)48 or of Chiaveghino (in the church of Sant’Agostino in Cremona). In Spain, we have only been able so far to locate one image of the Mystic Winepress with an ecclesiological dimension: one of Alardo de Popma’s engravings which illustrate Father Melchor Prieto’s Psalmodia Eucharistica, published in Madrid in 1622. A study of the text with its illustrations by Ewald Vetter49 tells us that the image in question – a prelude to the exegesis of Psalm 19 – shows God the Father working the lever of the winepress containing the standing figure of His Only Begotten Son, while a procession of priests fill their chalices at the foot of the spout. The renewal of Christ’s sacrifice in the daily practice of the Eucharist is made quite clear. However – and to end this first stage of our research – we would like to stress that in other Spanish artworks defending the Eucharist, such as the set of tapestries designed by Rubens for the Order of the Descalzas Reales in Madrid and El Transparente in Toledo Cathedral, the image of the Winepress is absent. It should not be forgotten that Melchor Prieto’s text was aimed at a cultivated and restricted public, mainly ecclesiastics. All the indications are that in Spain the image of the Mystic Winepress is an iconographic rarity which refers to salvation through the blood of Christ and which has a mainly devotional function that may or may not be related to the liturgy of a specific service or the spirituality of a specific sector of the Church, as was the case in Italy, even though the focus may be on Capuchins or Cartujans. It is also true that the theme was somehow revived by the body of mystic texts produced at the time, and it is to be found in a Carmelite context, for example, the visions and drawings by Maria Maddalena de’ Pazzi (1566–1607).50 Returning, however, to the widespread use of the Winepress, it must be noted that, when purporting to defend the mystery of transubstantiation or of the renewal of the 47 Angelo Loda, Il sangue del Redentore: raffigurazioni eucaristico-sacramentali in territorio italiano (PhD thesis; Università Cattolica del Sacro Cuore di Milano, 1998–9). 48 Maria L. Gatti Perer, ‘Cultura e spiritualità dell’Osservanza agostiniana: l’Incoronata di Milano’, Arte Lombarda 127/3 (1999) 7–67, on 24–44. 49 Vetter, Die Kupferstiche zur Psalmodia. 50 Stefano Pierguidi, ‘L’iconografia del “Sangue di Cristo” del Bernini: santa Maria Maddalena de’ Pazzi e il “Torchio mistico”’, Iconographica 7 (2008) 103–6.

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mystery in the sacrament, other iconographies were favoured: even Christ’s ultimate sacrifice was recalled with bleeding scenes of his suffering, as exemplified by penitential imagery,51 or with poetic metaphors, such as Francisco Zurbarán’s sweet Agnus Dei.

Bibliography Agüera Ros, Jose C.V., ‘Varios cuadros de alegorias dogmáticas en Murcia’, Lecturas de historia del arte. Ephialte 2 (1990) 383–8. Alexandre-Bidon, Danièle (ed.), Le pressoir mystique. Actes du colloque de Recloses (Paris: Cerf, 1990). Belting, Hans, Image et culte. Une histoire de l’art avant l’époque de l’art (Paris: Cerf, 1998). Belting, Hans, Le vrai image (Paris: Gallimard, 2007). Bleyerveld, Yvonne/Elen, Albert J./Niessen, Judith, Bosch to Bloemaert: Early Netherlandish Drawings of the Fifteenth and Sixteenth Centuries in Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen, Rotterdam (Paris: Fondation Custodia and Bussum: THOTH Publishers, 2014). Boespflug, François, Dieu dans l’art. Sollicitudini Nostrae de Benoît XIV (1745) et l’affaire Crescence de Kaufbeuren (Paris: Cerf, 1984). Boespflug, François, ‘Dieu en pape: une singularité de l’art religieux de la fin du Moyen Âge’, Revue Mabillon 2 (1991) 167–205. Bonaventure, Saint, Tractatus brevis domini Bonaventure de modo se preparandi ad celebrandum missam (Roma: Eucharius Silber, 1500) = Tractatus de praeparatione ad missam, in Obras (6 vols.; Madrid: Biblioteca de Autores Cristianos, 1946–55) vol. 2. Bott, Gherard (ed.), Martin Luther und die Reformation in Deutschland. Ausstellung zum 500. Geburtstag Martin Luthers (Frankfurt a.M.: Insel, 1983). Canalda i Llobet, Sílvia/Fontcuberta i Famadas, Cristina, ‘El “lagar mistico” en época moderna. Evolución, uso y significados en una imagen controvertida’, in Congreso Internacional Imagen Apariencia. Noviembre 19, 2008–Noviembre 21, 2008 (Murcia: Universidad de Murcia y Editum, 2009). Canalda i Llobet, Sílvia/Fontcuberta i Famadas, Cristina, ‘La prensa mística o el lagar místico en época moderna: usos y controversias alrededor de una imagen contundente’, in Canalda i Llobet, Sílvia/Narváez, Carme/Sureda, Joan (ed.), Cartografías visuales y arquitectónicas de la modernidad: Siglos XV–XVIII (Barcelona: Edicions i Publicacions de la Universitat de Barcelona, 2011) 187–207.

51 The only sculptural group related to the theme of Repentance and linked with the Winepress motif is that by Nicolás de Bussy, the famous Cristo de la Sangre (1693), largely restored after the Spanish Civil War. Bibliography on the image is ample but is best collected by Jose C.V. Agüera Ros, ‘Varios cuadros de alegorias dogmáticas en Murcia’, Lecturas de historia del arte. Ephialte 2 (1990) 383–8; Germán Ramallo Asensio, ‘Fuentes tipológicas e iconográficas de Nicolas de Bussy’, in Nicolás de Bussy. 7 mayo–24 julio 2003: Palacio Almudí (Murcia: Ayuntamiento de Murcia, 2003) 53–69.

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Carmona Carmona, Francisco M., ‘La “prensa mística” como redención de las almas del Purgatorio. A propósito del lienzo de la Iglesia de San Francisco de Córdoba’, Revista de estudios de ciencias sociales y humanidades 30 (2013) 65–78. Carty, Carolyn M., ‘Albrecht Dürer’s Adoration of the Trinity: A Reinterpretation’, The Art Bulletin 67/1 (1985) 146–53. Christensen, Carl C., Art and the Reformation in Germany (Athens: Ohio University Press, 1979). Christin, Olivier, Une révolution symbolique. L’iconoclasme huguenot et la reconstruction catholique (Paris: Éditions de Minuit, 1991). Clifton, James/Nirenberg, David/Neagley, Linda E., The Body of Christ in the Art of Europe and New Spain, 1150–1800 (München: Prestel, 1997). Defoer, Henri L.M., ‘Pieter Aertsen: The Mass of St. Gregory with the Mystic Winepress’, Master Drawings 18/2 (1980) 134–41. Esteban Lorente, Juan F., Tratado de iconografía (Madrid: Istmo, 1990). Fernández Terricabras, Ignasi, ‘Fernando I y la tercera etapa del Concilio de Trento’, in Alvar, Alfredo (ed.), Socialización, vida privada y actividad pública de un Emperador del Renacimiento. Fernando I, 1503–1564 (Madrid: Sociedad estatal de commemoraciones culturales, 2004) 389–408. Finaldi, Gabriele, The Image of Christ (London: The National Gallery, 2000). Franssen, Paul, ‘Le pressoir mystique dans la littérature anglaise’, in Alexandre-Bidon, Danièle (ed.), Le pressoir mystique. Actes du colloque de Recloses (Paris: Cerf, 1990) 187–95. Freedberg, David, Iconoclasm and painting in the revolt of the Netherlands, 1566–1609 (New York: Garland, 1988). García Mahíques, Rafael, ‘La iconografía emblemática de la Sangre de Cristo. A propósito de una pintura inédita de Vicente Salvador Gómez’, Boletín del Museo e Instituto Camón Aznar 68 (1997) 63–106. Gatti Perer, Maria L., ‘Cultura e spiritualità dell’Osservanza agostiniana: l’Incoronata di Milano’, Arte Lombarda 127/3 (1999) 7–67. Gatouillat, Françoise, ‘L’utilisation des modèles graphiques, dans le vitrail parisien du début du XVIe siècle’, in Herold, Michel/Mignot, Claude (ed.), Vitrail et arts graphiques, Xve–XVIe siècles. Actes de la table ronde des 29 et 30 mai 1997 (Paris: École nationale du Patrimoine, 1999) 151–68. Herbert, Arthur S., Historical catalogue of printed editions of the English Bible, 1525–1961. Revised and expanded from the edition of T.H. Darlow and H.F. Moule, 1903, by A.S. Herbert (London/New York: British & Foreign Bible Society/American Bible Society, 1968). Herrad of Landsberg, Abbess of Hohenbourg, Hortus Deliciarum, edited by Green, Rosalie/Evans, Michael/Bischoff, Christine et al. (2 vols.; London/Leiden: The Warburg Institute/University of London/Brill, 1979). Hsia, R. Po-chia, ‘Disciplina social y catolicismo en la Europa de los siglos XVI y XVII’, Manuscrits. Revista d’Història Moderna 25 (2007) 29–43. Koerner, Joseph L., The Reformation of the Image (Chicago/London: University of Chicago Press, 2004). Lambert, Gisèle, ‘Étude iconographique du thème du pressoir mystique à travers la gravure du XVe au XXe siècle’, in Alexandre-Bidon, Danièle (ed.), Le pressoir mystique. Actes du colloque de Recloses (Paris: Cerf, 1990) 107–27.

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Leeflang, Huigen/Schuckman, Christian (ed.), Karel van Mander, compiled by Leesberg, Marjolein (Rotterdam/Amsterdam : Sound & Vision/Rijksprentenkabinet, Rijksmuseum Amsterdam, 1999). Leproux, Guy-Michel, Le peinture à Paris sous le règne de François 1er (Paris: Presses de l’université Paris-Sorbonne, 2001). Loda, Angelo, ‘Un torchio mistico nel Varesotto’, Tracce 17/13 (1997) 15–18. Loda, Angelo, ‘Un’inedita raffigurazione del torchio mistico nel comasco’, Solchi 2/1 (1998) 21–5. Loda, Angelo, Il sangue del Redentore: raffigurazioni eucaristico-sacramentali in territorio italiano (PhD thesis; Università Cattolica del Sacro Cuore di Milano, 1998–9). Loda, Angelo, ‘Il torchio mistico: Cristo e la vite fra passione ed eucarestia’, Il sangue della redenzione. Rivista semestrale dei Missionari del Prez.mo Sangue 2 (2005) 27–62. Luijten, Ger (ed.), The De Gheyn family, compiled by Filedt Kok, Jan Piet/Leesberg, Marjolein (Rotterdam/Amsterdam: Sound & Vision/Rijksprentenkabinet, Rijksmuseum Amsterdam, 2000). Mâle, Émile, L’art religieux de la fin du Moyen Ȃge en France. Étude sur l’iconographie du Moyen Âge et sur ses sources d’inspiration (Paris: Armand Colin, 71995). Mane, Perrine, ‘Le pressoir mystique dans les fresques et les miniatures médiévales’, in Alexandre-Bidon, Danièle (ed.), Le pressoir mystique. Actes du colloque de Recloses (Paris: Cerf, 1990) 93–106. Marrow, James A., Passion Iconography in Northern European Art of the Late Middle Ages and Early Renaissance: A Study of the Transformation of Sacred Metaphor into Descriptive Narrative (Kortrijk: Van Ghemmert, 1979). McNamee, Maurice B., Vested Angels: Eucharistic Allusions in Early Netherlandish Paintings (Leuven: Peeters, 1998). Müller, Frank, ‘Images eucharistiques dans l’art de la Réforme’, in Alexandre-Bidon, Danièle (ed.), Le pressoir mystique. Actes du colloque de Recloses (Paris: Cerf, 1990) 171– 86. Müller, Frank, Art, religion et société dans l’espace germanique au XVIe siècle (Strasbourg: Presses universitaires de Strasbourg, 1997). Navarrete Prieto, Benito, La pintura andaluza del siglo XVII y sus fuentes grabadas (Madrid: Fundación de Apoyo a la Historia del Arte Hispánico, 1998). Pannier, Franc¸ois/Wang-Toutain, Françoise/Pommaret, Françoise (ed.), La danse des morts: Citipati de l’Himalaya, danses macabres et vanités de l’Occident: exposition du 15 septembre au 30 octobre 2004, Galerie Le toit du monde, Paris (Suilly-la-Tour: Findakly, 2004). Pasolini, Alessandra, ‘L’iconografia della fontana mistica in età moderna’, in Cadinu, Marco (ed.), Ricerche sulle Architetture dell’Acqua in Sardegna. Researches on WaterRelated Architecture in Sardinia (Wuppertal: Steinhäuser Verlag) 103–24. Pierguidi, Stefano, ‘L’iconografia del “Sangue di Cristo” del Bernini: santa Maria Maddalena de’ Pazzi e il “Torchio mistico”’, Iconographica 7 (2008) 103–6. Preuss, Hans, Die deutsche Frömmigkeit im Spiegel der bildenden Kunst (Berlin: FurcheKunstverlag, 1926). Ramallo Asensio, Germán, ‘Fuentes tipológicas e iconográficas de Nicolas de Bussy’, in Nicolás de Bussy. 7 mayo–24 julio 2003: Palacio Almudí (Murcia: Ayuntamiento de Murcia, 2003) 53–69.

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Rigaux, Dominique, À la table du Seigneur. L’eucharistie chez les primitifs italiens 1250– 1497 (Paris: Cerf, 1989). Rigaux, Dominique, ‘Le Sang du Redempteur’, in Alexandre-Bidon, Danièle (ed.), Le pressoir mystique. Actes du colloque de Recloses (Paris: Cerf, 1990) 57–67. Scribner, Robert W., For the Sake of Simple Folk. Popular Propaganda for the German Reformation (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1994). Schiller, Gertrud, Iconography of Christian Art (2 vols.; London: Lund Humphries, 1972). Sebastián, Santiago, Contrarreforma y Barroco (Madrid: Alianza, 1981). Stirm, Margarete, ‘Les images et la Bible’, in Bedouelle, Guy/Roussel, Bernard (ed.), Le temps des Réformes et la Bible (Paris: Beauchesne, 1989) 683–748. Strauss, Walter L., The Complete Drawings of Albrecht Dürer (6 vols.; New York: Abaris, 1974). Thomas, Alois, Die Darstellung Christi in der Kelter: eine theologische und kulturhistorische Studie, zugleich ein Beitrag zur Geschichte und Volkskunde des Weinbaus (Du¨ sseldorf: Schwann, 21981). Trens, Manuel, La eucaristía en el arte español (Barcelona: Aymá, 1952). Valdivieso, Enrique, Valdés Leal (Madrid: Ministerio de Cultura/Museo del Prado/Junta de Andalucía, 1991). Van Der Stock, Jan/Leesberg, Marjolein (ed.), The Wierix Family, compiled by van RuyvenZeman, Zsuzsanna/Leesberg, Marjolein (Rotterdam/Amsterdam: Sound & Vision/ Rijksprentenkabinet, Rijksmuseum Amsterdam, 2003). Venard, Marc, ‘Le Sang du Christ: sang eucharistique ou sang relique?’, Tabularia 9 (2009) 1–12. Vetter, Ewald M., Die Kupferstiche zur Psalmodia Eucaristica des Melchior Prieto von 1622 (Münster: Aschendorff, 1972). Violle, Bernard, ‘Le pressoir mystique sur les vitraux’, in Alexandre-Bidon, Danièle (ed.), Le pressoir mystique. Actes du colloque de Recloses (Paris: Cerf, 1990) 129–51. Vloberg, Maurice, L’Eucharistie dans l’art (Grenoble/Paris: B. Arthaud, 1946). Wandel, Lee P. (ed.), A Companion to the Eucharist in the Reformation (Leiden: Brill, 2014). Wenzel, Horst, ‘The Logos in the Press: Christ in the Wine-Press and the discovery of printing’, in Starkey, Kathryn/Wenzel, Horst (ed.), Visual Culture and the German Middle Ages. The New Middle Ages (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2005) 223–50.

Magdalena Mielnik

Delusive riches: allegorical representations of Gdan´sk in art at the end of the 16th and in the first half of the 17th century1

Gdan´sk in the 16th and 17th centuries The end of the sixteenth and the first decades of the seventeenth century are considered to be the most fruitful period in the history of Gdan´sk since it was a time of political, economic and cultural prosperity. The privileges gained by Kazimierz Jagiellon´czyk after its incorporation in 1454, which were renewed with each new king, provided favourable conditions for the city to flourish. The Baltic metropolis was very wealthy, mainly thanks to the grain and wood trade, which were exported to western Europe through Gdan´sk’s port in great quantities. The advantageous site of the city on the Baltic Sea coast and on the Vistula River delta enabled merchants to take over the trade between the Republic of Poland and western Europe almost entirely:2 80 per cent of commodities were exported from Poland through Gdan´sk, and 75 per cent of merchandise was imported.3 The Netherlands were the main market, from where it was further distributed to France, Spain, Scotland, Ireland and England.4 The record year was 1681, when 84,8055 lasts of grain (equal to about 170,000 tons) were exported from Gdan´sk. Merchandise from Hungary and Lithuania was also exported via the city.6 Local merchants made a profit from every transaction effected in the city as it was 1 This contribution was written while working on my PhD thesis Custom in the art of Gdan´sk in 16th and 17th century on the seminar of Professor Jan Harasimowicz at the University of Wrocław, whom I would like to kindly thank for his assistance and help. For critical reading of this text and all suggestions that helped to improve it I would like to kindly thank Rainer Kobe. 2 Milja van Tielhof, The ‘Mother of All Trades’: The Baltic Grain Trade in Amsterdam from the Late 16th to the Early 19th Century (Leiden: Brill Academic Publishers, 2002), 47. 3 Maria Bogucka/Henryk Samsonowicz, Dzieje miast i mieszczan´stwa w Polsce przedrozbiorowej (Wrocław/Warszawa/Kraków/Gdan´sk/Łódz´: Zakład narodowy im. Ossolin´skich, 1986), 325. 4 Tielhof, ‘Mother of All Trades’, 47. 5 Jacek Wijaczka, ‘Gospodarka Prus Królewskich’, in Kizik, Edmund (ed.), Prusy Królewskie. Społeczen´stwo, kultura, gospodarka 1454–1772 (Gdan´sk: Muzeum Narodowe w Gdan´sku, 2012) 131–204, on 151. 6 Karin Friedrich, Inne Prusy. Prusy Królewskie i Polska mie˛dzy wolnos´cia˛ a wolnos´ciami (1569– 1772) (Poznan´: Wydawnictwo Poznan´skiego Towarzystwa Przyjaciół Nauk, 2005), 75.

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forbidden for foreign tradesmen to carry out any commerce without a Gdan´sk intermediary.7 The politics of the city council aimed to maintain all the privileges and as much independence from the crown as possible. The art of the time reflected the ambitions of the ruling class and showed a glorious vision of the city and its inhabitants, based on ideals from antiquity. Yet it was also a time of confessional conflicts between the Lutheran majority of the city and those patricians who sympathised with the doctrine of John Calvin. The beginning of the seventeenth century was an age when the impact of the second Reformation on the aristocracy was the strongest.8 The situation turned to the advantage of the Lutherans in 1612 with a king’s decree forbidding followers of any confession other than Lutheran to hold a seat in a city council. The struggle to gain souls was also reflected in art. Moreover, the abyss between the ruling class and the rest of the city increased, as the former became less interested in commerce and more in intellectual studies, which according to many was to the detriment of the future of the city. Furthermore, the aristocracy constituted only one percent of the Gdan´sk society.9 The lower group of commoners was very diverse in terms of wealth. Merchants were the richest and tended to criticise the patricians most, which resulted in many conflicts between the commoners and the aristocracy in the sixteenth century.10 Numerous privileges and the opulence of the city did not have a positive effect on its reputation. Moralists criticised the citizens of Gdan´sk, particularly the nobility, for prodigality and pride. One of the first such criticisms is the elegy written by Johannes Dantiscus in 1535.11 Negative opinions comparing Gdan´sk to a parasite making a profit from the work of others are to be found in literature. One of the best known is Flis (1595) by Sebastian Klonowic, who wrote that the

7 Bogucka/Samsonowicz, Dzieje miast i mieszczan´stwa, 414; Wijaczka, ‘Gospodarka Prus Królewskich’, 153. 8 See Michael G. Müller, Zweite Reformation und Städtische Autonomie im Königlichen Preussen. Danzig, Elbing und Thorn in der Epoche der Konfessionalisierung (1557–1660) (Berlin: Akademie Verlag, 1997); Katarzyna Cies´lak, Mie˛dzy Rzymem, Wittenberga˛ i Genewa˛. Sztuka Gdan´ska jako Miasta Podzielonego Wyznaniowo (Wrocław: Wydawnictwo Leopoldinum, 2000). 9 Zdzisław Kropidłowski, Formy opieki nad ubogimi w Gdan´sku od XVI do XVIII wieku (Gdan´sk: Gdan´skie Towarzystwo Naukowe, 1992), 15. 10 See Maria Bogucka, ‘Walka Opozycji Mieszczan´skiej z Patrycjatem Gdan´skim w Drugiej Połowie XVI w.’, Przegla˛d Historyczny 3 (1953) 408–59; Maria Bogucka, Walki Społeczne w Gdan´sku w XVI w. (Warszawa: Ksia˛z˙ka i Wiedza, 1958); Edmund Cies´lak, Walki SpołecznoPolityczne w Gdan´sku w Drugiej Połowie XVII w. Interwencja Jana III Sobieskiego (Gdan´sk: Gdan´skie Towarzystwo Naukowe, 1962); Tadeusz Cies´lak, ‘Postulaty Rewolty Pospólstwa Gdan´skiego w r. 1525’, Czasopismo Prawno-Historyczne 6/1 (1954) 123–52. 11 Johannes Dantiscus, Jonas propheta de interitu civitatis Gedanensis, 1535; however, it referred mainly to the Reformation.

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sea devours all the Polish crops.12 Such criticism was also visible in arts. There are several examples of works of art condemning the morals of patricians, such as the merciless criticism in Anton Möller the Elder’s Last Judgement, painted in 1602 for the Artus Court (which was destroyed during World War II, fig. 18). Some of such works of art are directly devoted to the worshipping of wealth and they will be a subject of closer examination in this paper.

Vicissitudes of human life The Allegory of Wealth is a part of the Cycle of the Vicissitudes of Human Life,13 which was presumably very popular in Gdan´sk, as panels from three versions of the cycle are preeminent (in collections of National Museums in Gdan´sk, in Poznan´ and in the Royal Castle in Warsaw). They originate from the beginning of the seventeenth century and are all attributed to Herman Han or his follower14 (the panel from the Royal Castle collection is signed ‘h.h.’ and dated 1604). The panel illustrating the cycle’s title page from the collection in Poznan´ shows a sphere held up by allegories and planetary gods (the Gdan´sk creator’s addition) and is placed on a stage with a curtain. The sphere has been compared to a wheel of Fortune.15 Wealth has its place on the top of the sphere, which may refer to the fact that it is the craving for riches that turns the wheel. Divitiae is surrounded by Fortune and Jupiter. This is Fortune (Occasio) accompanying Wealth to underline its impermanence.16 Inside a sphere there is a representation of a city with a monument to Diana of the Ephesians and figures of wealthy Gdan´sk burghers on the left, whose pride and love of luxury result, as Marcin Kalecin´ski indicates, in 12 Sebastian F. Klonowic, Flis, edited by Hrabec, Stanisław (Wrocław: Zakład narodowy im. Ossolin´skich, 1951); Maria Bogucka, ‘Obraz miasta we “Flisie” Sebastiana Fabiana Klonowica’, Miscellanea Historico-Archivistica 11 (2000) 208–9. 13 Publisher: Philip Galle; inventor: Marten de Vos, engraver: Ian Collaert I, Theodor Galle, Karel van Mallery; the print was ordered by Philip Galle to honour Philippe Vuesels, a member of Brabant city council; see Marcin Ossowski, ‘Trójdzielny Model Społeczen´stwa Gdan´skiego’, in Ossowski, Marcin (ed.), Herman Han: mistrz ´swiatła i nokturnu: narodziny baroku w malarstwie dawnej Rzeczpospolitej (Pelplin: Muzeum Diecezjalne w Pelplinie, 2008), 194. 14 Marcin Kalecin´ski, Mity Gdan´ska. antyk w publicznej sztuce protestanckiej res publiki (Gdan´sk: Słowo/Obraz Terytoria, 2011), 345; Sergiusz Michalski, ‘Rywalizacja luteran´skokatolicko-kalwin´ska na przykładzie sztuk plastycznych w Gdan´sku około roku 1600’, in Ossowski (ed.), Herman Han, 33–53, on 41–2; Jacek Tylicki, ‘O historii sztuki i numizmatyce, czyli kto projektował niektóre donatywy gdan´skie Zygmunta III’, Biuletyn Numizmatyczny 1 (2009) 1–12, on 5; Jacek Tylicki, ‘Herman Han – dwa oblicza artysty’, in Ossowski (ed.), Herman Han, 55–73, on 57. 15 Kalecin´ski, Mity Gdan´ska, 340. 16 Eugeniusz Iwanoyko, ‘Model s´wiata i społeczen´stwa gdan´skiego w trzech obrazach z pocza˛tku XVII wieku w Muzeum narodowym w Poznaniu’, Studia muzealne 11 (1975) 44–64, on 49.

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misery, shown on the right (the city is destroyed by a fire).17 The inside of the sphere, which was also not present in the original version and was added by the Gdan´sk inventor, is similar to a print by Crispijn de Passe the Elder showing Heraclitus and Democritus laughing and crying over humans’ fate. The motif of the sphere with the representation of the world inside, carried by two fools, can also be found in Sebastian Brant’s Narrenschiff, 1494, and it refers to the foolishness of the world – stultitia mundi.18 The Allegory of Wealth shows a queue of burghers, Polish noblemen and monks lining up to gain precious goods. On each panel illustrating Pride Leads to Jealousy from the collection of Gdan´sk and Poznan´ (fig. 19), as well as on Wealth Leads to Pride from the Royal Castle, the panorama of Gdan´sk is visible in the background, which can leave no doubt that the city is the target of the allegory. This is not the only example of such a composition, as Sergiusz Michalski depicts the same scheme: an allegory in the foreground and a panorama of the city in the background is to be found in the Apotheosis Gdan´sk.19 The cycle’s sources of inspiration were the very popular prints that illustrated the elegy of Cornelius Kiliaan.20 The cycle shows the invariable turns of human fate: human beings seek wealth, the root of sin and vices, and as a result of their deeds they lose everything. The cycle consisted of seven prints, a title page and six allegorical scenes: Wealth Leads to Pride, Pride Leads to Jealousy, Jealousy Leads to War, War Leads to Poverty, Poverty Leads to Humility, Humility Leads to Peace, Peace Leads to Wealth and the cycle of life begins anew. The inventor, Marten de Vos, transformed Maarten van Heemskerck’s compositions.21 Heemskerck was the author of eight drawings22 inspired by series of floats depicting the triumphal procession on Assumption Day in Antwerp in 1561 that showed the Cycle of the Vicissitudes of Human Life: seven floats represented seven allegories (beginning and ending with prosperity, and everything ending with the Last Judgement).23 Researchers associate them with two frequently depicted sayings: ‘Earthly gain is

17 Kalecin´ski, Mity Gdan´ska, 345. 18 Both in de Passe and Heemskerck prints it refers to a representation of a world upside down; see Annette Strech, ‘“…die bossheit hatt die ober handt”. Eine Allegorie auf die verkehrte Welt von Crispijn de Passe (1564–1637)’, Kunstlicht 15 (1994) 12–18, on 15. 19 Sergiusz Michalski, ‘Gdan´sk als Auserwählte Christengemeinschaft’, in Ars auro prior: studia Ioanni Białostocki sexagenario dicata (Warszawa: Pan´stwowe Wydawnictwo Naukowe, 1981), 511. 20 Ossowski, ‘Trójdzielny Model’, 194; Hans-Martin Kaulbach/Reinhart Schleier, ‘Der Welt Lauf ’. Allegorische Graphikserien des Manierismus. Staatsgalerie Stuttgart, Graphische Sammlung, 18. 10. 1997–25. 1. 1998; Museum Bochum, 17.5.–5. 7. 1998 (Ostfildern-Ruit: Hatje, 1997), 156. 21 Kaulbach/Schleier, ‘Der Welt Lauf ’, 157. 22 Executed between 1562 and 1564, published as prints by Cock in 1565; see Walter S. Gibson, ‘Artist and “Rederijkers” in the Age of Bruegel’, The Art Bulletin 63 (1981) 426–46, on 435. 23 Gibson, ‘Artist and “Rederijkers”’, 433.

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all hay’,24 and ‘Life is like a theatre: all miserable’.25 There is a close link between the cycle and the theatre: de Vos was an active member of the rederijkers in Antwerp (amateur rhetoricians preparing allegorical, erudite performances). Virtues, vices, moral allegories, narrow and broad gates were the most common subjects shown.26 The rederijkers’ language was known also to Hans Vredeman de Vries, who, as Sergiusz Michalski writes, used their language in his paintings.27 When he came to Gdan´sk, he may also have influenced the artists’ environment on that point, too. In Gdan´sk paintings a few changes were made to the original ones. Gdan´sk paintings representing the cycle have been the subject of many analyses, also linking them to different confessions.

The changing nature of Fortune Marcin Kalecin´ski associates the meaning of the cycle with the concept of Fortune and her changing nature and suggests that it was made for a Calvinist public.28 According to Jan Harasimowicz, the criticism of wealth may suggest that the cycle was Lutheran,29 or it might be a reflection of the influence of pietism, which Harasimowicz supposes was present in Gdan´sk earlier than was thought – as early as 1605–10. Gdan´sk paintings were ordered at a difficult time, immediately after the plague in 1602.30 The number of citizens declined from 50,000 to 35,000, which could well have made this subject attractive to all the confessions. As Harasimowicz points out, the same print could be the source for both Protestant and Catholic art.31 Whereas it is very difficult to connect the paintings to the confession of their owners with any certainty, they undoubtedly provide further evidence not only of the knowledge of, but also of the ability to transform, popular graphic sources creatively. Blind Fortune and the impermanence of Wealth are the subjects of two drawings from Dresno Staatliche Kunstsammlungen, Allegory of Prosperity and 24 Ibid., 436. 25 ‘Vita humana est tanquam theatrum omnium miserarium’; see Kaulbach/Schleier, ‘Der Welt Lauf ’, 159. 26 Gibson, ‘Artist and “Rederijkers”’, 434. 27 Sergiusz Michalski, ‘Od “Alegorii poddania sie˛ Antwerpii” do “Apoteozy Gdan´ska”. O wpływie Hansa Vredemana de Vriesa na Izaaka van den Blocke’, Porta Aurea 9 (2010) 120–35, on 127. 28 Kalecin´ski, Mity Gdan´ska, 345. 29 Jan Harasimowicz, ‘Antoni Möller: malarz, moralista, obywatel’, Biuletyn Historii Sztuki 56 (1994) 339–58, on 342–4. 30 Kropidłowski, Formy opieki nad ubogimi, 14. 31 Jan Harasimowicz, ‘Historia sztuki w dobie rewolucji informatycznej i globalizacji’, Quart 1/ 15 (2010) 30–42, on 39.

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Allegory of Misfortune (1610), attributed by Jacek Tylicki32 to Herman Han (in the Dresno Kupfersichkabinett they are described as the work of Anton Möller the Elder). As Tylicki writes, they paraphrase Anton Möller the Elder’s Joash Repairs the Temple (fig. 20), dated 1602, and are polemical towards the Calvinistic conception of the multiplication of wealth as a sign of God’s grace.33 The drawings show Fortune turning from the merchants or acting in their favour.34 The subject may also be a condemnation of the desire for vain earthly goods.

A warning about the misuse of riches An interesting example of the view of Gdan´sk bearing a warning about the misuse of wealth is the title page print of the cycle with city views by Aegidius Dickmann (fig. 21).35 The cycle was commissioned by the city council and produced in Amsterdam, where Dickmann was sent to study. It was published three times (in 1617, 1625, 1648).36 Traditionally it is interpreted as the apotheosis of a flourishing city, yet a detailed analysis shows that moralistic elements can also be found here. As above, the panorama of the city is visible in the background. In the foreground, we can see Medusa’s head, a mirror, a horn of plenty and flowers. Behind this there is a stage on which two burgher couples stand, the elderly pair on the left and the young pair on the right. Both couples are pointing at the city. At the bottom of the gate there is an inscription, with four genre scenes, showing carts with grain and ships on one side, and dancing and hunting scenes on the other (they were interpreted as four elements in favour of the city or five senses, or months, which does not seem to be accurate).37 This part of the composition is a key to understanding the meaning of the print. The inscription reveals that the scene presents two different attitudes, represented by the two burgher couples. Opulence enables you to give gifts to numerous lands, which is why you call yourself Ceres’s man. It is properly then a goddess’ seat: divine Ceres carrying riches pours her gifts for you from her divine horn. 32 Tylicki, Rysunek gdan´ski ostatniej c´wierci XVI i pierwszej połowy XVII wieku, 152. 33 Ibid., 57. 34 Jacek Tylicki, Rysunek gdan´ski ostatniej c´wierci XVI i pierwszej połowy XVII wieku (Torun´: Wydawnictwo Uniwersytetu Mikołaja Kopernika, 2005), 57–8, 152. 35 Krystyna Jackowska, ‘Praecipuorum locorum et aedificiorum quae in urbe Dantiscana visuntur, adumbratio, 1617’, in Purc-Ste˛pniak, Beata (ed.), Jak z˙ywa jest martwa natura? przykłady martwych natur i scen animalistycznych w nowoz˙ytnej sztuce europejskiej (Słupsk: Muzeum Pomorza S´rodkowego, 2006), 37; Jolanta Talbierska, Grafika XVII wieku w Polsce. funkcje, artys´ci, os´rodki, dzieła (Warszawa: Neriton, 2011), 72, 331–2. 36 Talbierska, Grafika XVII wieku, 72. 37 Jackowska, ‘Praecipuorum locorum’, 87.

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It is not for those of you who dislike the banners of educated Pallada, but you that prefer idleness; you kill the barbarian [in yourself ?] by attacking Medusa with a bare sword and you favour Apollo’s care.38

The location of scenes and symbolic objects reveals the people to whom we may attribute the words. The first part of the inscription refers to the elderly couple: Ceres gave them fully deserved riches and should be appreciated; the meaning is underlined by the horn of plenty and the two scenes showing the source of Gdan´sk opulence, which is trading in grain. The first scene shows carts loaded with grain (hay?) and the second ships. The riches are not deserved by the couple on the other side, as they are lazy and worship Apollo instead of Ceres (which might refer to an interest in arts). The meaning is pictured with a mirror (a reference to pride) and flowers (a symbol of vanity). The scenes show vain pleasures: dancing and hunting. The latter refers not only to aristocratic ambitions but also to wasting money. In Sebastian Brant’s Narrenschiff, the chapter on hunting says that this is worthless and costly entertainment. The clothing of the couples is also suggestive: they are both wearing noblemen’s attire, a short doublet and a coat, but while the elder man is clothed modestly, the younger one, with his huge collar, ribbons, hat brooch, gloves in one hand, map in the other and nonchalant way of holding his coat, is revealed to be a dandy. The meaning of the print is that the riches of the city are wasted; there may also be a reference to a conflict among the members of the city council. It was a time of a war between Poland and Sweden and there was a discussion about whether Gdan´sk should build war ships and take part in the conflict. Johann Speymann, portrayed in a print, wanted to build ships, but was against any intervention in the war. The inscription on the print is also a reference to the first part of the Iliad in which Athena wants to stop Achilles from going to a war but he has promised it to Apollo and rejects her.39 In commentaries to this fragment, Erasmus of Rotterdam wrote that it symbolises the mind trying to control the impulses.40

38 ‘De locuplete perni multis alimenta ministras Terris, hinc CERERIS diceris. AULA Deae Ac merito: tibi nam fundit, sua munera cornu Diuite, Diuia CERES diuitasque ferens. / Non fex illa tibi, cui non uexilla politae Palladis, arrident, desidiosa placet Barbariem iugulas: stricto petis ense MEDUSAM. Dum Phoebum in gremio nidificare iuuas’. I would like to thank Maria Otto for her help translating this text. 39 Homer, Iliad, I, 210–15. 40 Desiderius Erasmus, Adagia (Wrocław: Zakład Narodowy im. Ossolin´skich, 1973), 123.

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The educational role of the parable of Lazarus and the Rich Man Another example of a composition showing an allegorical scene in the foreground and the panorama of the city in the background is the decoration of the lid of a musical instrument from the collection of the National Museum in Gdan´sk, with a view of the city, ca. 1625–40 (fig. 22). Carriages, couples of burghers and noblemen depicted in front of the city’s walls look like typical staffage. As such could also be interpreted the elegant villa on the left (many of the patricians had village villas) in which a party is probably being held, as we see richly dressed guests in the gallery. The only element disturbing this pleasant scene is a beggar near the steps leading up to the villa. The true subject of the panel reveals its graphic source, which was the Parable of Lazarus and the Rich Man from Matthäus Merian’s Icones biblicae published in 1625. The painting was at first thought to be the lid of a chest and it was attributed to Johann Krieg, but recently Jacek Tylicki has attributed it to Isaak van den Blocke and/or Bartholomäus Milwitz and discovered that it was part of an instrument – probably a clavichord.41 The dimensions of the panel suggest, however, that it was more likely the lid of a double virginal. Merian’s print also changes the date of its origin, not ca. 1615 as it was thought, but even later, between 1625 and 1640. Wide collars worn by patrician women were popular in the 30s and 40s of the seventeenth century, as in drawings from Heinrich Böhm’s album amicorum or in Portrait of a Woman (fig. 23), from about 1640, attributed to the workshop of Peeter Danckers de Rij, in the collection of the Gdan´sk National Museum. This would, however, exclude the authorship of Isaak van den Blocke and might support the theory of the authorship of Milwitz. Virginals were popular instruments, particularly among young women, and their decoration usually bore a moral. Scenes from the Old and New Testaments, especially the parable of the Prodigal Son, as well as the one of Lazarus and the Rich Man, were very common subjects. The two parables were very popular in pictorial arts, but the latter is far more rarely the subject of analysis in literature. The subject of Lazarus and the Rich Man was particularly popular in Protestant countries and belonged to a group of motifs referring to the biblical words: ‘It is easier to pass through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of God’.42 Its meaning was, however, interpreted as a warning against misusing riches, not a criticism of wealth itself. The subject could be found in visual arts, music and literature. In Gdan´sk, there are two compositions by Caspar Förster the Younger on this theme 41 Jacek Tylicki, ‘Widok Gdan´ska od północnego zachodu ze sztafaz˙em, ok. 1615–20 roku’, in Purc-Ste˛pniak, Beata (ed.), Usłyszec´ obraz: muzyka w sztuce europejskiej od XV do pocza˛tku XX wieku (Gdan´sk: Muzeum Narodowe w Gdan´sku, 2007) 583–4, on 583. 42 Ilja M. Veldman, Images for the Eye and Soul: Function and Meaning in Netherlandish Prints (1450–1650) (Leiden: Central Boekhuis, 2006), 79.

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and an anonymous play from about 1640 dedicated to the city council (however it is hard to say whether it would have had any impact as it was probably never staged). This subject is also sometimes linked to the problem of beggars in sixteenth- and seventeenth-century cities. Gdan´sk was famous for its good welfare system, but beggars were a problem: when two burghers stopped to talk on the street, for example, a beggar would immediately approach them.43 Documents underlined that no one in Gdan´sk suffered from hunger, and that no further support was needed.44 The fact that the attitude toward the poor changed in the sixteenth century is also important, as Edmund Kizik writes; the reasons for poverty were the subject of close examination, and those who chose to beg when able to work were disregarded.45 The beggar in the painting could be interpreted as a warning against spending money on luxuries, since pride and vanity resulted from this, as the biblical parable said. There are some differences, however, between the print and the panel: one of them is the lack of the dogs licking Lazarus’s wounds. Might this suggest that the painting was actually another, albeit close in meaning to the subject? The theme of a feast in a wealthy man’s house is also the subject of another painting, Dance in a Patrician’s House (1596) by Anton Möller the Elder (which was lost during World War II), showing patricians dancing and a beggar with a cup in the foreground (fig. 24). This could also be a scene showing the Dance in a Rich Man’s House, yet at the same time it could be a Sorgheloos (‘carefree’) scene, a popular sixteenth-century secular version of the Prodigal Son, without, however, a happy ending, as one learns from the saying ‘he who cannot support luxury lives in poverty’. In this case, the beggar is a symbol of poverty, which is a consequence of Sorgheloos profligacy. Very similar to these compositions is a series of woodcuts by Cornelis Anthoniszoon Theunissen from 1541,46 accompanied by a poem by Jacob Jacobsz. Jonck (who was probably active in rederijkers’ circles). It has been suggested that it could reflect a lost play.47 Both Gdan´sk paintings could also have some associations with the theatre. For example, a group on the right in Möller’s painting Dance in a Patrician’s House reveals a resemblance to the actors in the commedia dell’arte.48 43 Kropidłowski, Formy opieki nad ubogimi, 23. 44 Ibid., 166. 45 Edmund Kizik, ‘Gute Policey. Dyscyplinowanie zachowan´ społecznych w ewangelickim Gdan´sku w XVI i w pierwszej połowie XVII wieku’, in Skolimowska, Anna (ed.), Panorama lojalnos´ci: Prusy Królewskie i Prusy Ksia˛z˙e˛ce w XVI wieku (Warszawa: DiG, 2001) 73–91, on 89. 46 Muriel Barbier/Benoit Damant (ed.), Un air de Renaissance: la musique au XVIe siècle. 11 septembre 2013–6 janvier 2014, Musée National de la Renaissance, Chaˆ teau d’Écouen (Paris: Éditions de la Réunion des musées nationaux, 2013), 165; I would like to thank Marcin Kalecin´ski for suggesting this book. 47 Gibson, ‘Artist and “Rederijkers”’, 435. 48 For this suggestion I would like to thank Marcin Kalecin´ski.

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Conclusion All the examples of Gdan´sk art discussed here deal with the subject of wealth and its impermanence, or the consequences of its misuse. Craving for riches was criticised in Gdan´sk as it nurtured vices; humans desire earthly goods in vain, and it is the qualities of the soul that they should develop. What is different, however, among local critics of wealth is that they do not condemn wealth itself, nor the reason why the city was opulent, which was the main subject of the criticism of moralists who were not of Gdan´sk origin. It is rather the misuse, or even the waste, of goods which is criticised here. Spending money on luxuries is not only sinful on the part of the individual but dangerous for the whole city, which, as in the Cycle of the Vicissitudes of Human Life, may find itself on a less profitable turn of the Wheel of Fortune. It is interesting to note that, of this cycle, only the images of Wealth and Pride and the title page have survived. It might be too much to presume that those sections were commissioned as a kind of warning (Gdan´sk at the top of the wheel could easily be associated with the images of Wealth and Pride). Be that as it may, in all these works of art one can see the preoccupation that the improper use of money could end Gdan´sk’s prosperity.

Bibliography Barbier, Muriel/Damant, Benoit (ed.), Un air de Renaissance: la musique au XVIe siècle. 11 septembre 2013–6 janvier 2014, Musée National de la Renaissance, Chaˆ teau d’Écouen (Paris: Éditions de la Réunion des musées nationaux, 2013). Bogucka, Maria, ‘Obraz miasta we “Flisie” Sebastiana Fabiana Klonowica’, Miscellanea Historico-Archivistica 11 (2000) 208–9. Bogucka, Maria, ‘Walka Opozycji Mieszczan´skiej z Patrycjatem Gdan´skim w Drugiej Połowie XVI w.’, Przegla˛d Historyczny 3 (1953) 408–59. Bogucka, Maria, Walki Społeczne w Gdan´sku w XVI w. (Warszawa: Ksia˛z˙ka i Wiedza, 1958). Bogucka, Maria/Samsonowicz, Henryk, Dzieje miast i mieszczan´stwa w Polsce przedrozbiorowej (Wrocław/Warszawa/Kraków/Gdan´sk/Łódz´: Zakład narodowy im. Ossolin´skich, 1986). Cies´lak, Edmund, Walki Społeczno-Polityczne w Gdan´sku w Drugiej Połowie XVII w. Interwencja Jana III Sobieskiego (Gdan´sk: Gdan´skie Towarzystwo Naukowe, 1962). Cies´lak, Katarzyna, Mie˛dzy Rzymem, Wittenberga˛ i Genewa˛. Sztuka Gdan´ska jako Miasta Podzielonego Wyznaniowo (Wrocław: Wydawnictwo Leopoldinum, 2000). Cies´lak, Tadeusz, ‘Postulaty Rewolty Pospólstwa Gdan´skiego w r. 1525’, Czasopismo Prawno-Historyczne 6/1 (1954) 123–52. Friedrich, Karin, Inne Prusy. Prusy Królewskie i Polska mie˛dzy wolnos´cia˛ a wolnos´ciami (1569–1772) (Poznan´: Wydawnictwo Poznan´skiego Towarzystwa Przyjaciół Nauk, 2005).

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Gibson, Walter S., ‘Artist and “Rederijkers” in the Age of Bruegel’, The Art Bulletin 63 (1981) 426–46. Harasimowicz, Jan, ‘Antoni Möller: malarz, moralista, obywatel’, Biuletyn Historii Sztuki 56 (1994) 339–58. Harasimowicz, Jan, ‘Historia sztuki w dobie rewolucji informatycznej i globalizacji’, Quart 1/15 (2010) 30–42. Iwanoyko, Eugeniusz, ‘Model s´wiata i społeczen´stwa gdan´skiego w trzech obrazach z pocza˛tku XVII wieku w Muzeum narodowym w Poznaniu’, Studia muzealne 11 (1975) 44–64. Jackowska, Krystyna, ‘Praecipuorum locorum et aedificiorum quae in urbe Dantiscana visuntur, adumbratio, 1617’, in Purc-Ste˛pniak, Beata (ed.), Jak z˙ywa jest martwa natura? przykłady martwych natur i scen animalistycznych w nowoz˙ytnej sztuce europejskiej (Słupsk: Muzeum Pomorza S´rodkowego, 2006). Jackowska, Krystyna/Bartoszewska Butryn, Honorata, ‘Mie˛dzy oryginalnos´cia˛, a powtórzeniem. Refleksje nad graficznymi widokami Gdan´ska z XVI i XVII wieku’, in Talbierska, Jolanta (ed.), Metodologia, metoda i terminologia grafiki i rysunku. Teoria i praktyka (Warszawa: Semper, 2014) 293–309. Kalecin´ski, Marcin, Mity Gdan´ska. antyk w publicznej sztuce protestanckiej res publiki (Gdan´sk: Słowo/Obraz Terytoria, 2011). Kaulbach, Hans-Martin/Schleier, Reinhart, ‘Der Welt Lauf ’. Allegorische Graphikserien des Manierismus. Staatsgalerie Stuttgart, Graphische Sammlung, 18. 10. 1997–25. 1. 1998; Museum Bochum, 17.5.–5. 7. 1998 (Ostfildern-Ruit: Hatje, 1997). Kizik, Edmund, ‘Gute Policey. Dyscyplinowanie zachowan´ społecznych w ewangelickim Gdan´sku w XVI i w pierwszej połowie XVII wieku’, in Skolimowska, Anna (ed.), Panorama lojalnos´ci: Prusy Królewskie i Prusy Ksia˛z˙e˛ce w XVI wieku (Warszawa: DiG, 2001) 73–91. Klonowic, Sebastian F., Flis, edited by Hrabec, Stanisław (Wrocław: Zakład narodowy im. Ossolin´skich, 1951). Kropidłowski, Zdzisław, Formy opieki nad ubogimi w Gdan´sku od XVI do XVIII wieku (Gdan´sk: Gdan´skie Towarzystwo Naukowe, 1992). Michalski, Sergiusz, ‘Gdan´sk als Auserwählte Christengemeinschaft’, in Ars auro prior: studia Ioanni Białostocki sexagenario dicata (Warszawa: Pan´stwowe Wydawnictwo Naukowe, 1981) 511. Michalski, Sergiusz, ‘Od “Alegorii poddania sie˛ Antwerpii” do “Apoteozy Gdan´ska”. O wpływie Hansa Vredemana de Vriesa na Izaaka van den Blocke’, Porta Aurea 9 (2010) 120–35. Michalski, Sergiusz, ‘Rywalizacja luteran´sko-katolicko-kalwin´ska na przykładzie sztuk plastycznych w Gdan´sku około roku 1600’, in Ossowski, Marcin (ed.), Herman Han: mistrz ´swiatła i nokturnu: narodziny baroku w malarstwie dawnej Rzeczpospolitej (Pelplin: Muzeum Diecezjalne w Pelplinie, 2008) 33–53. Müller, Michael G., Zweite Reformation und Städtische Autonomie im Königlichen Preussen. Danzig, Elbing und Thorn in der Epoche der Konfessionalisierung (1557–1660) (Berlin: Akademie Verlag, 1997). Ossowski, Marcin, ‘Trójdzielny Model Społeczen´stwa Gdan´skiego’, in Ossowski, Marcin (ed.), Herman Han: mistrz ´swiatła i nokturnu: narodziny baroku w malarstwie dawnej Rzeczpospolitej (Pelplin: Muzeum Diecezjalne w Pelplinie, 2008).

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Strech, Annette, ‘“…die bossheit hatt die ober handt”. Eine Allegorie auf die verkehrte Welt von Crispijn de Passe (1564–1637)’, Kunstlicht 15 (1994) 12–18. Talbierska, Jolanta, Grafika XVII wieku w Polsce. funkcje, artys´ci, os´rodki, dzieła (Warszawa: Neriton, 2011). Tielhof, Milja van, The ‘Mother of All Trades’: The Baltic Grain Trade in Amsterdam from the Late 16th to the Early 19th Century (Leiden: Brill Academic Publishers, 2002). Tylicki, Jacek, ‘Herman Han – dwa oblicza artysty’, in Ossowski, Marcin (ed.), Herman Han: mistrz ´swiatła i nokturnu: narodziny baroku w malarstwie dawnej Rzeczpospolitej (Pelplin: Muzeum Diecezjalne w Pelplinie, 2008) 55–73. Tylicki, Jacek, ‘O historii sztuki i numizmatyce, czyli kto projektował niektóre donatywy gdan´skie Zygmunta III’, Biuletyn Numizmatyczny 1 (2009) 1–12. Tylicki, Jacek, ‘Widok Gdan´ska od północnego zachodu ze sztafaz˙em, ok. 1615–20 roku’, in Purc-Ste˛pniak, Beata (ed.), Usłyszec´ obraz: muzyka w sztuce europejskiej od XV do pocza˛tku XX wieku (Gdan´sk: Muzeum Narodowe w Gdan´sku, 2007) 583–4. Tylicki, Jacek, Rysunek gdan´ski ostatniej c´wierci XVI i pierwszej połowy XVII wieku (Torun´: Wydawnictwo Uniwersytetu Mikołaja Kopernika, 2005). Veldman, Ilja M., Images for the Eye and Soul: Function and Meaning in Netherlandish Prints (1450–1650) (Leiden: Central Boekhuis, 2006). Wijaczka, Jacek, ‘Gospodarka Prus Królewskich’, in Kizik, Edmund (ed.), Prusy Królewskie. Społeczen´stwo, kultura, gospodarka 1454–1772 (Gdan´sk: Muzeum Narodowe w Gdan´sku, 2012) 131–204.

Aleksandra Jas´niewicz

Two humanists in exile: neo-Stoic notions in the Gdan´sk portraits of Giovanni Bernardino Bonifacio, Marquis of Oria (1517–1597), and Martin Opitz (1597–1639)1

Introduction The neo-Stoic postulate of indifference to worldly events found particularly fertile ground at the end of the sixteenth and beginning of the seventeenth century due to increasing ideological and political crises. Acceptance of whatever ever-changing Fortune might bring and focussing on achieving tranquillity of the soul were perceived by the followers of neo-Stoicism as a source of inner strength when faced with the unpredictable nature of the surrounding reality. Such an approach towards the world and life is manifested in the portraits of two humanists that settled in Gdan´sk (Danzig) in their final years: Giovanni Bernardino Bonifacio, marquis of Oria (1517–97), and Martin Opitz (1597–1639), whose lives remained interwoven with the ideological, confessional and political conflicts of their time.

The image of Giovanni Bernardino Bonifacio The posthumous portrait of Giovanni Bernardino Bonifacio, marquis of Oria (fig. 25) was painted in 1597, presumably by Anton Möller the Elder.2 It depicts an elderly man seen against a black background, wearing a white obituary shirt. His 1 This paper is a version of the chapter ‘Portraits in Gdan´sk from the End of Middle Ages until Late Baroque (1420–1700). Paintings and drawings’ in Aleksandra Jas´niewicz, Portret w Gdan´sku: od schyłku ´sredniowiecza do wczesnego baroku (1420–1700). Malarstwo, rysunek (Gdan´sk: Muzeum Narodowe, 2018) 176–80, based on my PhD thesis written under the supervision of Professor Jan Harasimowicz at the University of Wrocław. I would like hereby to thank Professor Harasimowicz for all his support and helpful remarks. 2 Friedrich Schwarz, Verzeichniss der in der Stadtbibliothek Danzig vorhandenen Porträts Danziger Persönlichkeiten (Gdan´sk, 1908), 139, catalogue entry no. 21; Friedrich Schwarz, Danzig im Bilde. Verzeichnis der in der Danziger Stadtbibliothek vorhandenen bildlichen Darstellungen zur Geschichte und Topographie von Danzig und Umgegend (Karten, Ansichten, Grundrisse, historische Blätter, Wappen, Porträts) (Gdan´sk, 1913), 166, catalogue entry

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body is supine with his hands lying parallel on his chest, according to a customary way of placing a corpse at the time.3 The gaunt face with hollow cheeks of wax-like colour is carved out by deep shadows. A precisely drawn face and hands are seen in contrast to heavy folds of fabric. Bonifacio’s portrait is very probably based on his posthumous mask.4 This assumption is made from the portrait’s stark realism, reflecting signs of death. It can, therefore, be related to Renaissance bust portraits referring to classic imagines – posthumous masks, exhibited in the family houses of those portrayed. These types of images, usually sculpted, were executed in sixteenth-century Italy.5 Such a tie is suggested by the portrait’s close reference to sculpture, no. 3609; Paweł Groth, ‘Zbiór obrazów Biblioteki Gdan´skiej Polskiej Akademii Nauk’, Libri Gedanenses 4/5 (1970/71) 79–90, on 80; Manfred Welti, Giovanni Bernardino Bonifacio, Marchese d’Oria im Exil 1557–1597. Eine Biographie und ein Beitrag zur Geschichte des Philipismus (Geneve: Droz, 1976), 85–6; Katarzyna Cies´lak, Kos´ciół-cmentarzem. Sztuka nagrobna w Gdan´sku (XV–XVIII w.). ‘Długie trwanie’ epitafium (Gdan´sk: Polska Akademia Nauk, Instytut Sztuki, 1992), 138–40; Teresa Grzybkowska, ‘Portret Giovanniego Bonifacia d’Orii’, in Malinowski, Jerzy (ed.), Gdzie Wschód spotyka Zachód. Portret osobistos´ci dawnej Rzeczypospolitej 1576–1763. Katalog wystawy w Muzeum Narodowym w Warszawie, 22 maja–31 lipca 1993 (Warszawa: Muzeum Narodowe, 1993) 396, catalogue entry no. 339; Krystyna Jackowska, ‘Portret Giovanniego Bernarda Bonifacia, markiza d’Orii’, in Grzybkowska, Teresa (ed.), Aurea Porta Rzeczypospolitej. Sztuka Gdan´ska od połowy XV do kon´ca XVIII wieku (2 vols.; Gdan´sk: Muzeum Narodowe, 1997) vol. 2, 265, catalogue entry no. VII.5; Edmund Kizik, S´mierc´ w mies´cie hanzeatyckim w XVI–XVIII wieku. Studium z nowoz˙ytnej kultury funeralnej (Gdan´sk: Wydawnictwo Uniwersytetu Gdan´skiego, 1998), 85; Teresa Labuda, ‘Portret w twórczos´ci Antona Möllera’, in Friedrich, Jacek/Kizik, Edmund (ed.), Studia z historii sztuki i kultury Gdan´ska i Europy Północnej. Prace pos´wie˛cone pamie˛ci Doktor Katarzyny Cies´lak (Gdan´sk: Stowarzyszenie Historyków Sztuki, Oddział Gdan´ski, 2003) 115–34, on 121–3, fig. 6. Giovanni Bernardino Bonifacio was portrayed on numerous occasions during his lifetime. These include prints by Giulio Bonasone (engraving, 1548) and anonymous artists (an engraving dated 1567 and two woodcuts executed in Gdan´sk in 1599), medal bearing Bonifacio’s portait in the obverse and impressa, an image of a self-castrating beaver on the reverse (1567) and lost oil painting with the deceased dog Viola (1570). Unknown portrait of Bonifacio was burnt at the stake by the Inquisition in 1559. Bonifacio’s portraits were analysed in Welti, Giovanni Bernardino Bonifacio and Manfred Welti, Poz˙egnanie z Giovanni Bernardinem Bonifaciem, markizem d’Oria (1517–1597) (Gdan´sk: słowo/obraz/terytoria, 2014); Giovanni Stranieri, ‘Odio tyrannidis exil sponte. Giovanni Bernardino Bonifacio (1517–97) et Paul IV Carafa: résistance, fuile, exil’, in Morini, Agnès (ed.), Papes et Papauté: respect et contestation d’une autorité ‘bifrons’ (ebook; Saint-Étienne: Publications de l’Université de Saint-Étienne, 2013); Kenneth Gouwens, ‘Emasculation as Empowerment: Lessons of Beaver Lore for Two Italian Humanists’, European Review of History: Revue européenne d’historie 22/4 (2015) 536–62; Anna M. Lepacka, ‘“Per far medaglie di gesso”: Giovanni Bernardino Bonifacio i sztuka portretu “all’antica”’, in Otto, Maria/Pokrzywnicki, Jacek (ed.), Gdan´sk nowoz˙ytny a ´swiat antyczny (Gdan´sk: PAN Biblioteka Gdan´ska, 2017) 193–212. 3 Labuda, ‘Portret w twórczos´ci Antona Möllera’, 122. 4 Ibid. 5 Giorgio Vasari refers to this custom in the biography of Andrea Verrocchio, see David Freedberg, Pote˛ga wizerunków. Studia z historii oddziaływania (Kraków: Wydawnictwo Uniwersytetu Jagiellon´skiego, 2005), 222.

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attained by a limited colour palette, almost similar to the en grissaile technique. This artistic technique is understood as a reference to the category of endurance, sought in commemorative works of art.6 The sixteenth century saw a growing interest in painted and drawn images of bodies on deathbeds, the most prominent examples presumably being portraits of Emperor Maximilian I, painted in 1519 by Monogrammist AA (Steinmärkisches Landesmuseum Joanneum, Graz), and Martin Luther by Lucas Cranach the Younger (Niedersächsisches Landesmuseum Hannover), painted in 1546, based on a drawing by Lucas Furtenagel (Staatliche Museen zu Berlin). Realistic portraits of the deceased, without the air of glorification, gained a certain popularity in Holland from around 1600 until the 1620s.7 Unlike these images, where dead bodies are shown in a factual manner, on beds, with heads on pillows, Bonifacio’s likeness is set against a black background – as in a version of Luther’s posthumous portrait attributed to the circle of Lucas Cranach the Elder (fig. 26). Such an artistic technique, combined with the marble-like colouring of the figure and its silvery glow, suggests that it is not merely a record of appearance and implies a deeper reading.

Giovanni Bernardino Bonifacio’s life in exile Giovanni Bernardino Bonifacio arrived in Gdan´sk in 1591, after nearly forty years of voluntary exile. Born in 1517 in Naples, he received a throrough humanist education that included travels to Rome, France and Spain. Bonifacio revealed a lively interest in ancient and contemporary literature, supported men of letters, e. g. Lodovico Dolce, and wrote numerous poems himself. He belonged to a circle of humanists that gathered around Juan de Valdés, the Spanish Reformer who had been living in Naples since 1534 and who played a prominent role in the development of Reformation ideas in the city. Bonifacio became the follower of the Lutheran faith in the 1540s and, like many others, adopted Nicodemianism, i. e. feigned Catholicism. It became anecdotal though, as was famously recorded in a Jesuit handbook, that he was caught reading Ovid’s Tristia (masked as a 6 It was the question of endurance that became one of the most important arguments in favour of sculpture, presented in the course of the sixteenth-century discussion concerning a hierarchy of the arts. The counterargument, pointed out by e. g. Jacopo Pontormo, stated that it was the ability of painting to imitate sculpture that proved its superiority. Sculpture’s endurance was seen as based on the character of the material used; in painting it was supposed to result from its supernatural features; see Gabrielle Langdon, Medici Women. Portraits of Power, Love and Betrayal (Toronto: Toronto University Press, 2008), 53. 7 Antoni Ziemba, Iluzja a realizm: gra z widzem w sztuce holenderskiej 1580–1660 (Warszawa: Wydawnictwo Uniwersytetu Warszawskiego, 2005), 132–6.

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missal) during a mass.8 Bonifacio was aware of his growingly precarious situation. In order to avoid confiscation of his estates, in 1546 he bequeathed them to Emperor Charles V.9 When uncompromising Cardinal Carafa, the future Pope Paul IV, became head of the Neapolitan Inquisition in 1547, Bonifacio had no other choice but to leave Italy. After arriving in Venice in 1556, he began his life in exile.10 Acknowledged by the Inquisition as a heretic and apostate, Bonifacio travelled throughout Europe, from Switzerland to England, France, Poland and Lithuania, meanwhile increasing his collection of books, financing the circulation of new religious ideas and maintaining a prolific correspondence with humanists across the Continent. In March 1591, while travelling from England, he was shipwrecked during a storm near Gdan´sk. Bonifacio was rescued, as was most of his collection of books. With no funds on which to live, and suffering from gradually failing eyesight as a result of the traumatic events at the sea, the marquis donated his books to the city. In reward, he was granted a pension and allowed to live in the former Franciscan monastery, which had belonged to the town council since 1555 and had been the premises of the Academic Gymnasium since 1558.11 His books became the foundation of the town council library, which opened in 1596, and as such they shaped the intellectual horizons of later generations of the citizens of Gdan´sk. Erudite and an adherent of Irenicism, Bonifacio was particularly interested in the ideas developed by Erasmus and Philip Melanchthon. In his own writings, he pointed out the weak points in Zwingli’s arguments and, having published De haereticis by Sebastiano Castellio and Celio Secondo Curione in 1554, came into conflict with John Calvin.12 He referred to Lutheranism as ‘santissima confession’,13 but remained far from being dogmatic. He inherited the Waldensian notion of an individual relationship with God, independent of any institutional structures,14 and is often referred to as a man of free spirit.15 8 Welti, Giovanni Bernardino Bonifacio, 117; Gouwens, ‘Emasculation as Empowerment’, 559, n. 80. 9 Stranieri, ‘Odio tyrannidis exil sponte’. 10 Salvatore Panareo, ‘Gian Bernardino Bonifacio Marchese d’Oria in una recente opera sui Riformatori italiani’, Rinascenza salentina 25 (1937) 41–55, on 47. 11 Opened as a studium particulare in 1558 and called a Gymnasium ten years later. 12 Emidio Campi, ‘Calvin, the Swiss Reformed Churches, and the European Reformation’, in Backhus, Irena/Benedict, Philip (ed.), Calvin and His Influence 1509–2009 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011) 119–43, on 122. 13 E. g. in his letters to a friend, Bonifacio Amerbach. 14 Morini (ed.), Papes et Papauté. 15 Sebastiano Valerio, ‘La biblioteca umanistica di Giovanni Bernardino Bonifacio’, in Corfiati, Claude/Nichilo, Mauro de (ed.), Biblioteche nel Regno fra Tre e Cinquecento. Atti del Convegno di Studi, Bari 6–7 febbraio 2008 (Lecce: Pensa MultiMedia Editore, 2009) 303–20, on 305.

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Bonifacio’s views are revealed in his letters and poetry, his book collection, bearing numerous underlinings and notes, as well as in the biography Oratio de vita et morte Johannes Bernhardini Bonifacii, written by Andreas Welsius after his death and published in Gdan´sk in 1599 as a preface to his hymns.16

Death as liberation: Bonifacio’s posthumous portrait and his perceptions on death and dying These sources permit a reconstruction of the meanings of Bonifacio’s posthumous portrait. Numerous underlinings as well as notes on the margins of his books denote a strong presence of the subject of death within the marquis’s intellectual horizons.17 Bonifacio perceived death as the passage from evanescent temporality to eternity, opening the way to the haven of tranquillity.18 He thought of death as a liberation, being convinced of the immortality of the soul. At the same time, he was not interested in questions of punishment and infernal torment. As Bonifacio noted, I wish to be liberated and to be with Christ, He is my life, Death is my grace. Why would I be afraid of Death, knowing that I will go from toil to rest, from journey to tranquillity, from exile in this world to the real homeland. For the Christian, there is nothing more desirable than Death.19

In a letter sent in 1565 from Kraków to his friend, Bonifacio Amerbach, a writer, philanthropist and protector of Italian exiles in Basel, the marquis expresses a similar approach, stressing the opposition between the turbulence of life and liberation through death.20 In his epigram De condicione hominum psorum dedicated to Francesco Belti, Bonifacio wrote about the pursuit of tranquillity in God, and the absence of equanimity in the temporal world.21 Such a notion of death as liberation reflects a perspective expressed in two early Christian texts owned by the marquis: De morte, a consolatory text by Cyprianus (ca. 200–58), 16 Andreas Welsius, Oratio de vita et morte Johannis Bernhardini Bonifacii, in Bonifacio, Giovanni B., Miscellanea hymnorum, epigrammatum et paradoxorum quorundam (Gdan´sk, 1599). 17 Lidia Pszczòłkowska, ‘W kre˛gu Jana Bernardyna Bonifacia, fundatora Biblioteki Senatu Gdan´skiego’, Rocznik Gdan´ski 61/2 (2001) 33–57, on 52. 18 Welti, Giovanni Bernardino Bonifacio, 16. 19 He also stated: ‘To be afraid of death is not to believe in Christ. We are frightened by death because we do not believe Christ. Death is not the end of life, but a passage from a temporary journey to eternal life’, after Pszczòłkowska, ‘W kre˛gu Jana Bernardyna Bonifacia’, 52. 20 Morini (ed.), Papes et Papauté. 21 Domenico Caccamo, ‘Bonifacio, Giovanni Bernardino’, in Dizionario Biografico degli Italiani (92 vols. to date; Roma: Istituto dell’Enciclopedia Italiana, 1960–) vol. 12 Bonfadini-Borrello (1971), 197–200, on 199.

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and the treatise De bono mortis by Ambrosius (340–97). They both, in particular De morte, reveal a strong influence of Stoic ideas. As Bonifacio’s biographer Andreas Welsius noted in his description of the marquis’s final days, the Italian humanist requested De morte by Cyprianus to be read to him four days prior to his death. This situation has an analogy in Erasmus’s dialogue Funus (The Funeral), which was part of Epistolae familiares, published in 1518. One of the characters, Cornelius, a man of profound faith, unafraid of dying, senses his life’s end – like Bonifacio in Welsius’s record – four days earlier.22 Moreover, like the marquis, he spends this time with his friend, inter alia, whom he asks to read consoling literature. Part of the dialogue dedicated to Cornelius is framed by the sentence that refers to the topos of death as sleep, and which can serve to describe Bonifacio’s portrait: ‘Suddenly […] he closed his eyes, as if he had fallen asleep […], you would say that he did not die, but was sleeping’.23 Erasmian humanism of a neo-Stoic tinge had a significant influence on Bonifacio’s views. He referred to Erasmus’s ideas on many occasions and owned many of the thinker’s writings in his library.24 It is therefore possible that the description of the end of the marquis’s life – to some extent with licentia poetica – was styled on Erasmus’s work. In the aforementioned note, Bonifacio expressed his longing for eternal rest after his earthly journey. Having travelled continually for almost forty years, unable to settle in any place, he valued and anticipated tranquillity. Admittedly, in his letter to Bonifacio that Amerbach sent from Kazimierz near Kraków in 1561, the marquis wrote about his relentless impulse driving him to travel,25 yet in his youth he had already presented a love of peace as a factor behind his resignation from lucrative offices.26 This desired state can be described in Stoic terms as tranquillitas animi. The philosophical framework of tranquillity of the soul was laid down by Cicero, whom the marquis highly respected, in his work De officiis.27 Cicero relates this term to greatness of the soul (magnitudo animi) and 22 Desiderius Erasmus, Rozmowy potoczne (Warszawa: Czytelnik, 1962), 159. 23 Ibid., 160. 24 Manfred Welti, Die Bibliothek des Giovanni Bernardino Bonifacio, Marchese d’Oria, 1517– 1597. Der Grundstock der Bibliothek Danzig der Polnischen Akademie der Wissenschaften (Bern/Frankfurt a.M./New York: Peter Lang, 1985), 95; Pszczòłkowska, ‘W kre˛gu Jana Bernardyna Bonifacia’, 38, 40; Zbigniew Nowak, ‘Bonifacio, Jan Bernard’, in Słownik Biograficzny Pomorza Nadwis´lan´skiego (4 vols.; Gdan´sk: Gdan´skie Towarzystwo Naukowe, 1992–2002) vol. 1 (1992), 138–40. 25 Caccamo, ‘Bonifacio, Giovanni Bernardino’, 199. 26 Pszczòłkowska, ‘W kre˛gu Jana Bernardyna Bonifacia’, 38. 27 Christopher Gill, ‘Panaetius on the Virtue of Being Yourself ’, in Bulloch, Anthony W./Gruen, Erich S./Long, Anthony A. et al. (ed.), Images and Ideologies: Self-Definition in the Hellenistic World (Berkeley/Los Angeles/London: University of California Press, 1993), 339.

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sees noble life as a source of tranquillity and steadiness.28 In the Christian interpretation of Stoicism, tranquillity of the soul arises from a truly Christian life. According to Welsius, Bonifacio led such a life. His portrait, therefore, through the reference to a dignified and peaceful death, is an expression of an assumption that the final stage of life, whether peaceful or violent, encapsulates the meaningfulness of one’s existence as a whole.29 Moreover, from the late Middle Ages the peaceful death of a spiritually prepared individual was perceived as exemplary and respectable, as was dying in dramatic circumstances, e. g. on a battlefield.30 In the portrait analysed, the humanist’s body is shown against a black background, which can be understood as immaterial and timeless spiritual space.31 A sense of the depth of this darkness is created by the contrasting figure of Bonifacio, illuminated by a cold light. Its silvery hues highlight the figure against the darkness. This effect of the light may suggest symbolic meanings, such as transcendent light emanating from the dead. As such, it defines the spiritual state of the portrayed as a reflection of purity and grace, according to the words of St Luke: ‘If then your whole body is full of light, with no part of it in darkness, it will be as full of light as when a lamp gives you light with its rays’ (Luke 11:36). Such an interpretation of light in Bonifacio’s portrait leads to the issues developed by neo-Platonic philosophy and its renaissance, that is to say, the Christian interpretation, which can also be found on the horizon of Bonifacio’s philosophical interests.32 Scrutinising the realism of the dead person’s features signals the metaphysical dimension of the image. In being similar to the person portrayed, such paintings were seen as bringing him/her to life.33 A tradition of such paintings of magical notion was passed down from the Middle Ages and was still vibrant in the early modern era.34 Such an interpretation was associated mainly with wax images, but

28 Ibid., 340. 29 Thomas W. Laqueur, The Work of the Dead: A Cultural History of Mortal Remains (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2015), 181. 30 Kristin B. Aavitsland, ‘Visualizing the Art of Dying in Early Protestant Scandinavia: A Reading of a Late Sixteenth-Century Tapestry from Leksvik, Norway’, Journal of Early Modern Christianity 1/1 (2014) 115–41, on 122. 31 Labuda, ‘Portret w twórczos´ci Antona Möllera’, 122. 32 Bonifacio’s attention to Platonic ideas is reflected e. g. in the dualistic image of human nature, seen by him as composed of a body, not deserving attention, and the divine element, the soul. Bonifacio described himself as an eclectic, particularly appreciating Aristotle, see Pszczòłkowska, ‘W kre˛gu Jana Bernardyna Bonifacia’, 52; Valerio, ‘La biblioteca umanistica di Giovanni Bernardino Bonifacio’, 312. 33 Adolf Reinle, Das stellvertretende Bildnis: Plastiken und Gemälde von der Antike bis ins 19. Jahrhundert (Zürich: Artemis, 1984), 7, 190. 34 Ibid., 200–1; Langdon, Medici Women, 106.

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also with painted ones.35 These images were believed to assume the spiritual constitution of the person portrayed and, it was thought, were able to evoke it in the viewer.36 Perceived in such way, the portrait of Giovanni Bernardino Bonifacio gained particular meaning a few years after it was painted, when it was presented to the library of the town council. Here the image became a proxy for the spiritual ancestor of the visitors to the library, embodying and evoking a philosophical attitude that remained in tune with the ideology officially promoted in Gdan´sk at the time.

Portrait of Martin Opitz References to the Stoic idea of tranquillity of the soul can also be deciphered in the portrait of Martin Opitz (fig. 27). The painting depicting the poet is dated 1637 and was executed by Opitz’s Silesian friend, Bartholomeus Strobel, who settled in Gdan´sk in 1634.37 35 Freedberg, Pote˛ga wizerunków, 228–35. Such a way of perceiving realistic portraits of the deceased is proved by the writings of Giorgio Vasari and Vincenzo Borghini (Langdon, Medici Women, 106). The painted and the depicted was often understood as such, see Rupert Shephard, ‘Art and Life in Renaissance Italy: A Blurring of Identities?’, in Rogers, Mary (ed.), Fashioning Identities in Renaissance Art (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2000) 63–72, on 68. 36 Langdon, Medici Women, 107. 37 Catalogus librorum manuscriptorum… et aliorum rerum pretiosarum, quae asservantur in Bibliotheca Senatus Gedanensis AC. MDCII, Gdan´sk, Library of the Polish Academy of Science (BG PAN), entry no. 11, 45, 31; Schwarz, Danzig im Bilde, 192; Zygmunt Batowski, Bartłomiej Strobel, malarz ´sla˛ski XVII wieku (Lwów, 1916), 9, 23; Hans F. Secker, Die Kunstsammlungen im Franziskanerkloster zu Danzig (Gdan´sk: Stadt- und Provinzial Museum Danzig, 1917), 6, 17, catalogue entry no. 7; Eugeniusz Iwanoyko, Bartłomiej Strobel (Poznan´: Pan´stwowe Wydawnictwo Naukowe, 1957), 25, 29, 91–2, 93, 94, 115, catalogue entry no. 4, fig. 29; Anna Gosieniecka, Malarstwo gdan´skie XVI i XVII wieku: katalog wystawy w Muzeum Pomorskim w Gdan´sku (Gdan´sk: Muzeum Pomorskie, 1957), 22, 71–2, catalogue entry no. 93, fig. 35; Ewa Houszka, Portret na S´la˛sku XVI–XVII wieku (Wrocław: Muzeum Narodowe, 1984), 65, 70, catalogue entry no. 101, fig. 88; Krystyna Jackowska, ‘Portret Martina Opitza’, in Malinowski, Jerzy (ed.), Gdzie Wschód spotyka Zachód, 341, catalogue entry no. 98; Jacek Tylicki, Bartłomiej Strobel malarz epoki wojny trzydziestoletniej (Torun´: Wydawnictwo Uniwersytetu Mikołaja Kopernika, 2000), 189–91, further bibliographical references there; Jacek Tylicki, ‘Portret Martina Opitza’, in Grzybkowska (ed.), Aurea Porta Rzeczypospolitej, vol. 2, 267, catalogue entry no. VII.10; Krystyna Jackowska, ‘Portret Martina Opitza’, in Omilanowska, Małgorzata/Torbus, Tomasz (ed.), Tu¨r an Tu¨r: Polen-Deutschland 1000 Jahre Kunst und Geschichte (Köln: DuMont Buchverlag, 2011), 342, catalogue entry no. 9.20; Przemysław Mrozowski, ‘Portret i jego uroda w dawnej Polsce’, in Mrozowski, Przemysław/ Rottermund, Andrzej/Juszczak, Dorota et al. (ed.), Uroda portretu. Polska od Kobera do Witkacego. Katalog wystawy na Zamku Królewskim w Warszawie (Warszawa: Zamek Królewski, 2010), 23. Another portrait completed during the poet’s lifetime is an engraving by Jacob van der Heyden (1630), see Tylicki, Bartłomiej Strobel, vol. 1, 191.

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The three-quarter length portrait shows Opitz in dark apparel against a darkolive background. Looking at the viewer, with his long hair fashionably styled, he is wearing a sophisticated black waistcoat, open at the front and contrasted with a large white collar and cuffs, both decorated with delicate lace, and with a white shirt visible beneath the dark robes. The portrait is characterised by a reduced expression of the face and gestures as well as by a limited number of other objects: a barely perceivable table covered with a dark green cloth and a black hat on it. This portrait belongs to the so called retardataire type, which was developed in Holland by Nicolaes Eliaszoon Pickenoy, Thomas de Keyser, Michiel Janszoon van Miereveldt, Jan Anthoniszoon van Ravesteyn and Paulus Moreelse, whose portraits are pointed to as a reference to Strobel’s artwork.38

Opitz’s life in exile Martin Opitz, the ‘Father of German poetry’, arrived in Gdan´sk in 1636, after years of travels and service at numerous courts. He was born in 1597 in Silesian Bolesławiec (Buznlau). Educated at a local Calvinist gymnasium, he left his hometown early to continue his studies, first in Wrocław (Breslau) and later in Frankfurt and Heidelberg, a leading Calvinist city in Germany at the time. His further peregrinations, undertaken during the Thirty Years’ War, included Holland, namely the city of Leyden, and later Denmark, Silesia, Transylvania, Berlin, Dresden and Paris. These peregrinations were mainly linked to the poet’s diplomatic activity, which remained as complex as the political situation of the time. He served, respectively, a Calvinist duke, Georg Rudolf of Liegnitz (1624), a strongly anti-Protestant burgraf, Karl Hannibal von Dohna (1626), another Calvinist duke, Johann Christian of Liegnitz and Brieg (1630–5) and eventually a Polish Catholic king, Władysław IV, at all times pointing out ‘the Silesian issue’,39 and acting in defence of his home country. Opitz’s attachment to neo-Stoic philosophy never changed, though. He had already become familiar with such ideas in Wrocław, where neo-Stoic philosophy was strongly promoted by the town council, which ‘sought to train future political and social leaders by giving them a solid training in the liberal arts’.40 Of great 38 Tylicki, Bartłomiej Strobel, vol. 1, 190. 39 Jan Harasimowicz, ‘“What Would Be Better now than the Struggle for Freedom and Faith”. Confessionalisation and the Estate’s Quest for Liberation as Reflected in Silesian Art of the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries’, in Buss, Klaus/Schilling, Heinz (ed.), 1648. War and Peace in Europe (3 vols.; Münster: Westfaelisches Landesmuseum, 1998) vol. 2, 297–306. 40 Neo-Stoic views were promoted in Breslau by Christophorus Colerus, see David G. Halsted, Poetry and Politics in the Silesian Baroque: Neo-Stoicism in the work of Christophorus Colerus and his Circle (Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz, 1996).

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significance was Opitz’s later meeting with Hugo Grotius in Paris. Like Grotius, Opitz was himself a follower of Justus Lipsius, both in his world view as well as in his approach to poetry, in which he shared Lipsius’s anti-Ciceronianism as a literary concept.41 In 1634–5 Opitz, at the time in the service of Duke Johann Christian, was forced to leave Silesia. Recommended by Count Gerhard von Dönhoff to the Polish king Władysław IV, he settled in Gdan´sk as the Royal Historiographer and Secretary. For the Silesian poet, the Baltic city was a place safe from religious persecution with an intellectual atmosphere that was close to the poet’s own views. Opitz’s portait represents the aforementioned retardataire type, which, in its static composition, in the sitter’s bland expression and lack of expressive gestures, represents the neo-Stoic ideal of tranquillitas.42 It was understood that this state of the soul could be acquired through a renouncement of the passions, which were seen, on the contrary, to be a source of human misery. The only salvation from the sea of calamities, as Lipsius referred to life, was supposed to be steadiness, constantia, and a detachment from the anxieties brought about by changeable Fortune. These ideas were expressed by Opitz on numerous occasions in his poetry. Sympathising with the irenic movement, particularly views expressed by Hugo Grotius,43 in 1633 he published a poem concerning Christianity independent of politics, Die Trostgedichte in Widerwertigkeit des Krieges. It was first entitled Über die Beständigkeit, which was a reference to Seneca and Lipsius; his poem Zlatna of 1622 was given a subtitle Von der Ruhe des Gemüthes, paraphrasing the title of Seneca’s treatise De tranquillitate animi.44 As Opitz stressed in his poem Vesuvius, as well as the aforementioned Trostgedichte, mollification is a sine qua non condition in order to become aware of the nature of all occurrences, and the misunderstanding of things results from obnubilation of silence by the affections. Constantia and tranquillitas animi were, according to the Silesian poet, a means to understanding the world, a kind of shield against the vicissitudes and violence of the times.45 Martin Opitz was portrayed by Bartholomeus Strobel in a fashionable manner. The choice of this particular portrait mode can be linked to certain meanings 41 Hans Blom/Laurens C. Winkel, ‘Introduction’, in Blom, Hans/Winkel, Laurens C. (ed.), Grotius and the Stoa (Assen: Royal Van Gorcum, 2004) 3–20, on 6. 42 Ann Jensen Adams, ‘The Three-Quarter Lenght Life-Sized Portrait in Seventeenth Century Holland. The Cultural Functions of Tranquillitas’, in Frantis, Wayne E. (ed.), Looking at Seventeenth Century Dutch Art: Realism Reconsidered (New York: Syracuse University, 1997) 158–74, on 167. 43 Siegfried Wolgast, Philosophie in Deutschland zwischen Reformation und Aufklärung 1550– 1650 (Berlin: Akademie Verlag, 1988), 809. 44 Ibid., 820. 45 Ibid., 821.

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associated with it. The tranquillity of the soul, so greatly sought by the poet, is expressed by the composed expression of the idealised face. The so called akimbo gesture of his left hand is interpreted as a sign of the defence of the ideas presented by the poet and can be taken to mean a manifestation of inner strength, provided by the virtue of constancy; the poet’s right hand is held down, beside his body, not placed on the table as a gesture of possession, which was common in portraiture of the time and frequent in the iconography of the Habsburgs.46 This, in turn, can be read as an expression of a neo-Stoic lack of attachment to the gifts of Fortune.

Neo-Stoic notions in Gdan´sk portraits of patricians Similar formal solutions to those found in the portrait of Martin Opitz, and also taken as an indication of neo-Stoic attitudes, can be seen in two secular portraits painted in Gdan´sk in about the mid-seventeenth century: a portrait of Councillor Salomon Giese, presumably by Adolf Boy (fig. 28), and an unknown patrician by Laurence Neter (fig. 29). In both paintings, neo-Stoicism serves the ideology of power, according to the principle that inner discipline is the highest form of power and a condition necessary to rule others.47 It was believed that the natural order of things made it easier for male representatives of the highest echelons of society to bridle their emotions. This assumption reflects a neo-Stoic image of the world, society and man, perceived as the juxtaposition of the rational and the emotional.48 At the level of society, these categories are found in the antinomy of the elite, characterised by composure and rational behaviour, on the one hand, and the populace, unable to restrain their emotions, on the other.

Conclusion The recurrent question in research on early modern history is what the underlying factors behind the development of the modern individual were. According to the view expressed by John Martin in the article ‘Inventing Sincerity, Refashioning Prudence: The Discovery of the Individual in Renaissance Europe’, the issue of pivotal importance was ‘a shift in moral vocabulary’ that can be traced during the Renaissance, based on the tension between the conflicting notions of prudence and sincerity. 46 Tylicki, Bartłomiej Strobel, vol. 1, 191. 47 Jensen Adams, ‘The Three-Quarter Lenght Life-Sized Portrait’, 168. 48 Ibid., 167, 170, 171.

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Early modern prudence is well defined, for example, in Machiavelli’s The Prince, as a cautious attitude where one’s feelings and motivations need to remain disguised and others’ actions and words deciphered. A much less cynical perspective, which, however, still stresses the need for prudent communication with society, is Baldassarre Castiglione’s The Courtier. An appreciation of sincerity as a value contrary to prudence, and signifying the expression of one’s true feelings and opinions, is linked by John Martin to the views of early Protestant Reformers, who ‘elevated [it] to a defining virtue’.49 A factor of great importance for late sixteenth- and seventeenth-century ‘moral vocabulary’ was neo-Stoic philosophy. It promoted sincerity, taken to mean remaining well-balanced in one’s nature or temperament, as well as an interest in self-analysis and a recognition of one’s feelings and emotions.50 At the same time, in its pursuit toward inner tranquillity detached from the external world, neo-Stoic philosophy encouraged self-consciousness and control over one’s feelings that led toward erecting a public façade. The latter reading of neoStoicism can be traced in portraits that focussed on the display of power – as in the aforementioned portraits of Gdan´sk patricians from around 1650, where their presumed philosophical affiliation might reflect personal attitudes as much as serve political agendas. In the depictions of Bonifacio and Opitz, on the other hand, neo-Stoic notions emerge as substantial threads in the intricate textures of their lives.

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Sibylla Goegebuer

The role of St John’s Hospital religious community in Bruges in the 16th- and 17th-century history of care. How did the tangible 17th-century art collection commissioned by St John’s Hospital represent the intangible history of caring for people?

Introduction The history of care in St John’s Hospital in Bruges is a story of continuity, underpinned by one constant: charity. It is charity that creates a harmonious combination between caring for the sick and the sacred element, combining the tangible and intangible aspects. What was the role of the religious community of St John’s Hospital in the history of human concern in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries? How did this tangible and intangible story become visible in the seventeenth-century art collection commissioned by and for the hospital community, and in the work of the hospital? In other words, how is religion linked to material culture? Does the former help perpetuate this story of continuity? This tale of continuity, which is an important theme in the hospital’s history, is approached here from one angle: it is limited in time (i. e. restricted to the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries) and limited in content (that is to say, by the way the religious hospital community functioned). There are three points of interest: 1. an overview of the hospital’s history from its establishment in about 1150 to roughly 1500 paints a picture of the twofold history of devotional and medical care and highlights the importance of the notion of continuity therein. It is a period with two turning points that defined the institution’s history, which has continued to the present day; 2. for the hospital, the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries were a period of preservation of the tradition as well as one of innovation. A third key period, the second half of the sixteenth century, clearly set its definitive seal on the modern history of the hospital; 3. how does the hospital’s history, mentioned in points 1 and 2, turn the tale of caring and the interest in tradition and innovation – which are to a large extent linked to the intangible history of concern for people – into the hospital’s tangible seventeenth-century art collection? How is this collection to be interpreted from a cultural-historical perspective?

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Research into the connection between the hospital’s tangible and intangible heritage is a recent discipline, which is in line with the process of reorienting St John’s Hospital as a museum with a cultural-historical inspiration, that is, as a lieu de mémoire. Here we examine the art commissioned by the religious community from a cultural-historical perspective. What do the images tell us? Does the way in which things are portrayed tell us something about the lifestyle of the religious community? Can we deduce from this that this group of people lived an isolated life on a hospital site that was a medical-devotional island in the centre of the city of Bruges? Material and immaterial testimonies concerning the function of the hospital in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries should be gathered together better in a coherent, cultural-historical study. This contribution is a first step in this direction.

The hospital’s history from circa 1150 until circa 1500: the beginning of an uninterrupted, twofold history of devotional and medical care St John’s is one of the most typical hospital complexes in northern and western Europe. It is also the city of Bruges’s oldest hospital and is situated on a unique site, which has not changed since the Middle Ages. The hospital consists of historic buildings dating from the twelfth/thirteenth to the seventeenth century, the nineteenth-century hospital and twentieth-century extensions.1 St John’s is a listed monument in a city that is a UNESCO world heritage site. It is a monument with a human dimension, in both the devotional and the medical aspects, since the complex included both a hospital and a home for the needy. The hospital is considered to be one of the oldest in Europe, in the sense of its being both a hospital and a hospice for pilgrims, travellers, the sick and the weak, who often included the older citizens of the city of Bruges, with clear management structures and obvious hospital and convent functions, governed by the Christian virtues of hospitality and charity. In all probability, the hospital was established by the city’s wealthy merchant traders around 1150.2 The continual authority of the Bruges town council, which 1 Sigrid Dehaeck/Robrecht Van Hee, ‘Van hospitaal naar virtueel ziekenhuis’, in Allegaert, Patrick/Basyn, Jean-Marc/Buyle, Marjan et al. (ed.), Architectuur van Belgische hospitalen (Bruxelles: Ministerie van de Vlaamse Gemeenschap – Afdeling Monumenten en Landschappen, 2004) 12–21. 2 Hilde Lobelle-Caluwé, Vroeger gasthuis, nu museum. Het middeleeuwse Sint-Janshospitaal te Brugge (Bruges: OCMW-AZ Sint-Jan, 1990).

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consisted chiefly of these wealthy merchants, is apparent time and time again in the way in which the institution was managed. The notion of structural organisation gradually became more important in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries. Generally speaking, ecclesiastical and municipal governments started to organise care for the sick, the poor and the needy in a more structured manner. Naturally, they also bore in mind the role that they could continually play in this process from various perspectives. The charity that was provided by the nobility, the bourgeoisie, the Church and the convents became increasingly regulated. But the practical aspect of this city’s welfare policy always remained in the hands of the religious institutions. Charity and caring for the poor was centralised in the hospitals and the almshouses.3 The twelfth century continues to be one of the milestones in the hospital’s history. The oldest preserved regulations date from 1188, and were drawn up at the request of members of the hospital staff. Convent rules were not used as a model, but the spirit of St Augustine’s advice was obvious throughout the document.4 A three-tiered management structure was created during the thirteenth century, with the town magistrate as head governor, assisted by the tutors and the master of the friars’ convent. The master was responsible for the daily management of the hospital. The hospital site became a separate parish, with a church, a priest and a cemetery – subject to the bishop’s permission – with a cemetery chapel. During this period, the Church authorities attempted to gain a better grip on the so-called semi-religious communities, such as the Bruges hospital.5 In the fifteenth century, the hospital became a microcosm of administrative and social-economic intrigue and regulations. The bishop and the town magistrate weighed their respective competences against each other and against the hospital. The second half of the fifteenth century marked a turning point in terms of the organisation of the St John’s Hospital, a second milestone. 1459 was the year in 3 Sibylla Goegebuer, ‘The Memling in Sint-Jan, Hospital Museum Re-Established as Sint-Janshospitaal Museum. A History of Continuity’, International Symposium ‘Documentary and Visual Sources for the Historical Study of Hospitals’ organised by the Institute for Research on Medieval Cultures of the University of Barcelona, Barcelona and L’Hospitalet de l’Infant, 17– 19 April 2013 (unpublished paper); Griet Maréchal, ‘Hospitalen tijdens de middeleeuwen’, in Allegaert/Basyn/Buyle et al. (ed.), Architectuur van Belgische hospitalen, 26–31. 4 Regulations St John’s Hospital Bruges, January 1188, parchment (Bruges, Archives Public Welfare Centre, Fund St John’s Hospital, charter no. 1); Griet Maréchal, ‘Het Sint-Janshospitaal in de eerste eeuwen van zijn bestaan’, in Lobelle-Caluwé, Hilde/Goetinck, Marc (ed.), SintJanshospitaal Brugge 1888/1976 (Bruges: Die Keure, 1976) 48–53; Griet Maréchal, ‘Archivalia’, in Lobelle-Caluwé/Goetinck (ed.), Sint-Janshospitaal Brugge, 342–59. 5 Maréchal, ‘Archivalia’, 54–6, 67–9.

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which the friars and nuns adopted the rule of St Augustine following the orders of Bishop Jean Chevrot of Tournai (fig. 30).6 It seems logical that the hospital, the city of Bruges and the bishop then took successive measures to define their powers. A document dating from 1463 confirms the city’s commitment with regard to the material possessions, while the religious authorities were responsible for the hospital’s personnel, namely the master, nuns and friars. The limited medical staff that worked in the hospital alongside no more than twenty nuns was appointed by the city, or could be privately hired to work for the nuns and friars, or for the patients in the hospital.7 Before the sixteenth century, it is clear that reforms were appearing, even in hospitals, that would go on to inspire the values that helped pave the way for the Council of Trent. The hospital’s articles of association speak well for the fifteenth-century bishops’ policy.8 At about the same time, hospitals aimed to provide more privacy and comfortable care. Reserved beds were probably introduced in this period. The historic hospital buildings comprise three monumental wards and a convent for the nuns and the friars, built between the twelfth and seventeenth centuries. Hospitals in general experienced a boom during the twelfth and thirteenth centuries: founded in the twelfth century, St John’s was significantly expanded at the end of the thirteenth in three different building phases, which resulted in the three large halls constructed perpendicular to the first hospital. Combined, the halls created one large, uninterrupted hospital ward. The architecture was simple and functional, and the ward’s unusual dimensions can be understood in function of their sacred character, which approximates that of a church.9 The hospital symbolised the transition from life into death. The dimensions can also be understood in function of their medical character. The church close to the hospital wards represents Christ’s symbolic offering to mankind. The convent areas, which were also located near the hospital, were a preliminary, worldly revelation

6 Jozef Geldhof, ‘De kloostergemeenschap van het Sint-Janshospitaal, 1459–1975’, in LobelleCaluwé/Goetinck (ed.), Sint-Janshospitaal Brugge, 169–74; Regulations by Bishop Jan Chevrot of Tournai, Rijsel, 16 May 1459, parchment (Bruges, Archives Public Welfare Centre, Fund St John’s Hospital, charter no. 1222); Griet Maréchal, ‘Reglement van bisschop Jan VII Chevrot van Doornik voor het Sint-Janshospitaal (Rijsel, 1459 mei 16)’, in Lobelle-Caluwé/Goetinck (ed.), Sint-Janshospitaal Brugge, 357. 7 Regulations St John’s Hospital Bruges, 5 August 1463 (Bruges, Archives Public Welfare Centre, Fund St John’s Hospital, box no. 36, charter no. 23); Geldhof, ‘De kloostergemeenschap van het Sint-Janshospitaal’, 173. 8 Geldhof, ‘De kloostergemeenschap van het Sint-Janshospitaal’, 175–6; Bruges, Archives Sisters St John’s Hospital, Anonymous, Introduction: fol. 1r–2r, Rule St Augustinus: 3r–15r, Articles of association: 16r–30r. 9 Jean-Pierre Esther, ‘Monumentenbeschrijving en bouwgeschiedenis’, in Lobelle-Caluwé/ Goetinck (ed.), Sint-Janshospitaal Brugge, 265–85.

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of celestial Jerusalem. Life on earth, the transition rite and heaven: these form a perfect trinity at St John’s Hospital. The form of the building was inspired by the civic and church architecture of the Roman and Gothic periods. The thirteenth-century northern aisle was extended in the fifteenth century by the church’s apse. Gothic sculptures from the final quarter of the thirteenth century and representing the death of the Virgin Mary – a theme that is quite appropriate in the medieval hospital context of death and devotion – adorn the portal of the central ward, which is also the oldest one (fig. 31).10 The presence of Mary can be explained as follows: she plays the role of intermediary, who pleads with God for the healing of the patients. Her significance and presence have a devotional, charitable and also medical justification. The relationship between the setting of the sculptures in the hospital’s façade and passers-by, visitors, medical and religious staff and patients, who can thereby constantly read the tale of care, means that Mary becomes the metaphor for spiritual and corporeal healing.11 Throughout history, the religious community has spoken about Mary’s particular role and here she delivers a visual ars moriendi. Her presence is a beacon of hope for those who are suffering physically in the hospital.

St John’s Hospital in the 16th and 17th centuries: a sense of the preservation of organisation and management (i. e. the awareness of the importance of tradition) combined with a sense of innovation. Some works of art commissioned by, and for, the hospital in the 17th century reflect the spirit of this institution of human concern In a quest for a life that was both long and good and a death inspired by God, St John’s Hospital attempted to strike a balance between the role that it attributed to devotion and medical science. The boundary between an outlook on life founded on rational or irrational principles did not always run in a straight line but shifted, according to a practical and emotional assessment of the facts, and developed along with social evolution. The change in the religious and medical mindset that manifested itself all over Europe in the sixteenth century is also interwoven with the hospital’s history.12 10 John W. Steyaert, ‘De beeldhouwkunst in het Sint-Janshospitaal. De middeleeuwse beeldhouwkunst’, in Lobelle-Caluwé/Goetinck (ed.), Sint-Janshospitaal Brugge, 443–7. 11 John Henderson, ‘Healing the Body and Saving the Soul: Hospitals in Renaissance Florence’, Renaissance Studies 15/2 (1985) 189–216. 12 Sibylla Goegebuer, ‘Een vrijgeleide naar de hemel. Heiligenverering in de 16e en 17e eeuw’, Museumbulletin Musea Brugge 3 (2011) 38–41.

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In his Descrittione di tutti i Paesi Bassi, altrimenti detti Germania inferiore which Lodovico Guicciardini (Florence 1521 – Antwerp 1589) wrote in 1566, the author did not really pay attention to the harbingers of social, political and economic depression.13 How was society reflected in the devotion, in the religion, of these times? How did social unrest graft itself onto the growing religious divisions? Did religion and religious art offer a refuge? Was the harsh reality toned down by devotion and, if so, in which way? For centuries, the hospital community emphasised the importance of tradition and continuity. From the sixteenth century onwards, this was combined with the notion of a three-dimensional upgrading. The hospital, a monument within the city, became a city within the city. Local care for the sick had to compete with a globalising process of medicalisation. The upscaling also took place in the area of devotional care. Spiritual care attempted to strike a balance with the process of medicalisation but still took precedence in a world of concern that did not yet have sufficient medical options at its disposal to provide a medical answer to all ills. Charity continued to be the driving force, the catalyst. Caring for the sick and devotion with a human dimension remained important.14 A number of events in the city of Bruges and in St John’s Hospital indicate a changing mindset and relationship between religious and administrative powers. They reflect a changing world which found inspiration in the ideas of the Renaissance. These changes also became apparent in the hospital’s policy and began to develop as early as the fifteenth century. Three concepts manifested themselves: there was the wave of moralisation, of democratisation and finally of humanisation. The grip of religious power fluctuated, not always being firm and steady during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, and the structure of the hospital community was, therefore, both stable and fragile. In turn, all these developments influenced art production by and for the hospital, and from the perspective of the hospital, the appreciation of art. Our approach to St John’s Hospital is twofold: from the perspective of the hospital as a monument, i. e. the hospital’s physical aspect, and from the intangible aspect, that is to say, the devotional shift within the hospital, the care for people’s souls. It is important to recall the impact of the Council of Trent on the operation of the hospital’s tangible and intangible functions and also to examine whether the hospital ascribed to Tridentinism. 13 Luc Duerloo, ‘Rijkdom en luister van de Nederlanden’, in Van de Velde, Carl/Duerloo, Luc/ Huysmans, Antoinette et al., Beeldhouwkunst van de Zuidelijke Nederlanden en het Prinsbisdom Luik 15de en 16de eeuw (Barcelona: Fundació La Caixa, 1999) 19–24. 14 Goegebuer, ‘Een vrijgeleide naar de hemel’.

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The first perspective is the hospital seen as a monument. The religious community needed a place to live and hospital space also was required. Architectural projects from a pragmatic perspective and religiously inspired achievements answered both these needs. A separate, new convent was built for the nuns between 1539 and 1544 (fig. 32). Work continued well into the 1560s and further work was carried out in the seventeenth century. As a result, the nuns’ convent became completely separated from the hospital ward and from the convent for the friars. This was the period in which the hospital accommodated an exceptionally large number of patients, probably due to the plague epidemics of 1546, 1569 and 1581.15 An ordinance by Bishop Remigius Driutius from 1573, which was drafted in collaboration with the town magistrate, aimed to curtail the lifestyle of the nuns and friars, which was deemed too worldly. The tasks of the master and prioress, and other positions in the hospital, were regulated. Their lifestyle was carefully monitored, and excess personnel was dismissed. Wine consumption was drastically reduced and the office of wine measurer was taken from them. In about the same period, the hospital was also struggling with huge debts (1582–3), prompting the tutors to sell off some real estate owned by the hospital.16 The revised articles of association, which incorporated the Rule of St Augustine of the Sisters of St Janshuus in Bruges, were published in 1598. This record, written in Flemish and issued by Bishop Mathias Lambrecht (1596–1602), clarified the roles of the nuns and the friars in the community with one sentence: ‘wat verandert naer den tyt. Als datter een Vrauwe nu voort an zal overste wesen daer van te vooren den meester d’overste was […]’ (‘From now on, a woman shall run the hospital whereas previously a man did […]’).17 At about the same time, in 1597, the bishop provided a corrected, Dutch translation of St Augustine’s Rule to the Black Sisters in Bruges – another religious order that tended to the sick. An adapted version of their articles of association of 1461 was also published, ‘adapted to the new living circumstances’.18 The bishop paid great attention to convent reforms and the same change was effected for the nuns in St John’s Hospital. The construction of the convent and the separation from the friars, followed by their subsequent disappearance – friars were no longer allowed in the hospital unless special permission was obtained from the bishop – was fully in accordance with the reform of the religious community, which manifested itself 15 Marc Ryckaert, ‘Enkele data in verband met de geschiedenis van Brugge en van het SintJanshospitaal’, in Lobelle-Caluwé/Goetinck (ed.), Sint-Janshospitaal Brugge, 15–24, on 20. 16 Ryckaert, ‘Enkele data in verband met de geschiedenis van Brugge en van het Sint-Janshospitaal’; Geldhof, ‘De kloostergemeenschap van het Sint-Janshospitaal’, 174–5. 17 Geldhof, ‘De kloostergemeenschap van het Sint-Janshospitaal’, 175. 18 Felix Van den Berghe/Jozef Van den Heuvel/Germana Verhelst, De Zwartzusters van Brugge, Diksmuide, Oostende, Veurne en Brazilië (Bruges: Uitgeverij Marc Van de Wiele, 1986), 103–8.

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in the second half of the sixteenth century. Generally speaking, one could say that the efficiency and sustainability of an important objective of a convent’s operations, namely to be a reflection of Celestial Jerusalem on earth, was thereby controlled. Reforming a convent meant adapting the Celestial Jerusalem to suit its renewed purposes. In this case, it also meant representing the Celestial Jerusalem in such a way as to be understood from a reformed outlook on life. It means materialising the intangible. Following the construction of the new convent, the separation of the convents, the changes to the articles of association and the quiet elimination of the friars, the tools for this were available in St John’s Hospital. The Council of Trent played a role in these events, even to the point of instituting the cloister, or clausura, for nuns. Imposing clausura on a hospital community obviously also presented a great obstacle to caring for the sick. The solution to this was to reorganise the hospital’s structure and articles of association. It is worth noting that there was already a separation into a hospital, a men’s convent and women’s convent. The second half of the sixteenth century marks a third undisputed turning point in the history of the hospital. In this case, it is impossible to decouple the architectural interventions from faith and devotion. The interest in the articles of association, or in other words the ‘identity’ of a convent community, can thereby be seen to be inspired by a motivation that was the outcome of the Council of Trent and the implementation of the decrees within the diocese. Just like the new articles of association, made for the beguinage of Sint-Truiden (1589)19 and the adapted version of the articles for the Black Sisters in Bruges (1597), the revised articles for St John’s Hospital (1598) show how ad hoc, practical articles could no longer have a function in a convent adapting to a new society. The second perspective concerns the intangible, devotional aspect of the hospital. The turning point in the hospital’s history is linked to a major turning point in the religious history of the city, the diocese and Flanders. The hospital landscape had to evolve along with this. Luther’s teachings arrived in Bruges in 1523, followed by Anabaptism in about 1530 and Calvinist rules in around 1550.

19 Hanne Van Herck, ‘Een gemeenschap van begijnen (13de–18de eeuw)’, in Coomans, Thomas/ Bergmans, Anna (ed.), In zuiverheid leven. Het Sint-Agnesbegijnhof van Sint-Truiden, het hof, de kerk, de muurschilderingen (Brussel: Vlaams Instituut voor het Onroerend Erfgoed in samenwerking met de Provincie Limburg, 2009) 15–63, on 26–9; Hasselt, State Archives, FBST, Register 9, fol. 79r–90v; by abbot Leonard Betten and canon Jan Duyfkens from the Church of Our Lady. Regulations 1589, copy Straven 1876, 154–85.

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Oostende, the last Calvinist bulwark in the Southern Netherlands, capitulated in 1604.20 The fact that Juan Luis Vives moved to Bruges in 1528 is another important noteworthy fact in the social and hospital context. With the support of the town magistrate, in 1526, he had published De subventione pauperum, which was a project concerning a system of centralised poor relief.21 Principles of today’s welfare state can be found in several articles that are mentioned in the book. A similar tendency toward humanism was also noticeable in the Council of Trent, which led to a Catholic restoration based on a humane approach. Farreaching measures had already been taken a few years before the negotiated publication of the decrees in 1565. One of these was the restructuring of the various dioceses. Bruges became the seat of the new diocese of Bruges in 1559. The mediators and idealists who worked hard to achieve these reforms were the local bishops, the clergy, and local nuns and friars, such as the hospital community. A municipal pawn house, ‘berch van charitate’ (monte di pietà), was opened in 1573. Ghent occupied the city of Bruges in 1578, and the city’s government was placed in hands of a committee of seventeen Calvinist officials; the Catholic Mass was effectively banned from 1581 to 1584.22 In the seventeenth century, the hospital’s emphasis continued to be on protecting its own medical and religious world. In the seventeenth and even in the eighteenth century, the medical staff consisted of two surgeons and two physicians. Several episcopal visits were also organised in the wake of Trent. The following is an account of one such visit, written by Bishop Antonius Triest (1617–22) in 1620.23 The 1620s were a period of relative prosperity, thanks to the twelve-year truce between Spain and the Netherlands (1609–20). The document shows that St John’s Hospital continued to work relatively independently, while the Council’s influence is apparent in the level of control over the lives of the nuns – with respect for the efficient operation of the hospital, which points to a more humane and sensitive approach to the hospital as an institution – and in the level of control of the state of the relics. However, there was not yet any talk of clausura. 20 Ryckaert, ‘Enkele data in verband met de geschiedenis van Brugge en van het Sint-Janshospitaal’, 20. 21 Hilde De Bruyne, ‘Brugse zorg voor de burger in de 16de en 17de eeuw’, in Vandamme, Ludo/ Boelaert, Johan R./Deneweth, Heidi et al. (ed.), Van chirurgijns tot pestheiligen. Ziek zijn in Brugge in de 16de en 17de eeuw: tentoonstelling 29 september 2011–26 februari 2012, Brugge, Memling in Sint-Jan – Hospitaalmuseum (Bruges: Vrienden van de Stedelijke Musea, 2011) 14–19. 22 Ryckaert, ‘Enkele data in verband met de geschiedenis van Brugge en van het Sint-Janshospitaal’, 20. 23 Bruges, State Archives, TBO 123–475/BIS, Triest, Bishop Antonius (1620), Official report visitation St John’s Hospital Bruges.

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In effect, the document slightly redefines, yet confirms, the existing profile of a sister community that was also prevalent in the sixteenth century. It says that a balance was maintained in the supervision by the bishop and the city, and that the 1598 articles of association remained in effect. Most of the attention in the document focussed mainly on administrative operations, on what the hospital actually did. Caring for the sick was briefly mentioned, with a concern for people’s souls taking priority, which seems logical if you consider the nature of the document, i. e. a report of a visit. There is a shift in emphasis, more specifically to the Eucharist, the veneration of relics and the state of these relics. Two comments are worth noting: a large amount of money was spent on the day the accounts were submitted, and the election of the prioress took place in the presence of not only the bishop or a bishop’s delegate but even the town magistrate. Further comments were that on this day, the laymen and the nuns spent the whole day drinking. It was, therefore, clear that measures had to be taken to curtail this. Moreover, patients who reported to the hospital were questioned by the priest about their religious tendencies and received Catholic instruction if they belonged to a religion other than the ‘true faith’. The conclusion I draw from this report is that St John’s Hospital does not seem to have been a bastion of the Counter-Reformation, but that its hospital activities underscored the sustainability of the Catholic ideal of devotion and care (caritas) by perpetuating the continuity of the two activities. The nuns did not fight in a spiritual campaign, nor did they forcefully try to convert patients (although patients were questioned about their faith when they reported to the hospital and received instruction if they did not ascribe to the ‘true faith’). The aim was to safeguard the salvation of like-minded religious communities. The presence of religious brotherhoods in the hospital and the associated incentive of devotion and charity bear testimony to this. A Benedictine nun was welcomed into the community ‘by love and mercy’, and the community strove for a virtuous life, peaceful relations and a chaste lifestyle.24

24 Bruges, State Archives, TBO 123–475/BIS, Triest, Bishop Antonius (1620), Official report visitation St John’s Hospital Bruges.

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How did the story of care and the interest in tradition and innovation that are to a large extent connected to the intangible history of care turn into the hospital’s tangible 17th-century art collection? How should this collection be interpreted from a cultural-historical perspective? There are five seventeenth-century works of art with a Tridentine significance commissioned by the convent community of the St John’s Hospital. Before discussing these works here, it is necessary to explain the context of these art works within St John’s Hospital. Almost all the art works in the presentday hospital belong to the collection of the city’s Public Social Welfare Centre, and were commissioned by the convent community within a religious context, as a function of the site’s emphasis on care and charity. They are utilitarian objects and were not collected or gathered for museum purposes but grew organically as an intrinsic part of this institution. The building, collection and its intangible and tangible history constitute one inseparable entity. Museums have to reinvent themselves constantly. In recent times, St John’s Hospital no longer serves as a museum that primarily approaches the history of care from the perspective of the history of art. It has, in fact, become clear that hospital museums increasingly follow a cultural-historical course, which they are right to do. European hospitals and the museums that have arisen from them have a charitable origin, which justifies their existence. The art that was commissioned by these hospitals, which had a function in the hospital context and which is still often present in these institutions inspired by a conscious desire to preserve continuity, presupposes that these collections had a cultural-historical significance. The art effected in, and for, the hospital gives the institution an identity. It reflects a religious and medical identity in a complementary sense that is impossible to disentangle and has existed in a museum for more than one hundred and fifty years.25 The Madonna and Child Surrounded by Saints by Jacob van Oost the Elder (1601–71), which dates from 1637, is an altarpiece (fig. 33). It plays a central role in the hospital church, where it serves as an altar screen. The protagonists, Mary, Christ and a legion of saints, all play an important role in the composition. The hospital’s religious community has always venerated the Virgin Mary and has encouraged devotion to her. There is nothing new about the central role of this veneration in the canvas but it ties in perfectly with the role attributed to Mary in Marian imagery in 1637. The painting has a didactic character. The saints 25 Goegebuer, ‘The Memling in Sint-Jan – Hospital Museum’; Sibylla Goegebuer, ‘Museum en publiek’, Symposium Kunstgeschiedenis, University of Groningen, 5 September 2014 (unpublished paper).

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depicted, St John the Baptist and St John the Evangelist (the hospital’s patron saints), St Augustine, St Sebastian and St Roch (the plague’s patron saints, as the city was once again in the throes of a plague epidemic by 1634),26 St Adrian (the only saint who gazes modestly at the spectator) and probably St Anthony the Abbot are all figures who were traditionally venerated in the hospital. The Baroque redesign of the hospital church, which was completed in 1637,27 the year in which the altarpiece was painted, is in keeping with the spirit of religious triumphalism and optimism of the Counter-Reformation. Hans Memling’s St John Altarpiece, a triptych with outer panels on which the hospital’s religious community is portrayed, was moved to the chapter house in the new nun’s convent following the installation of a new main altar with a new altarpiece, without any portraits of the religious community (fig. 34). There is nothing unusual about the fact that a new, more Baroque altarpiece was produced following the restyling of the church. The altarpiece may also correspond to the urge to produce altarpieces in keeping with the directives of the Council.28 The choice of the subject, the Madonna and saints, perfectly suits the context of the hospital devotion, and matches the setting, a church, an altar and a hospital with a religious community of Augustine nuns. The participation of the hospital community, which commissioned the work, in the choice of the subject matter is evident. The question of whether this work is Tridentine can be answered in two ways. It is Tridentine because the subject matter, style and setting correspond to the requirements imposed by the Council of Trent on religious art production. The unspoken requirement of an altarpiece was that it should present an iconic image worthy of veneration in the centre, in this case the Virgin Mary and Child, with the Madonna appearing as an idealised woman. Nothing reveals the realistic, social conditions. For Caravaggio, for example, the world depicted is the secular world. He allows little escape to the supernatural realm. Van Oost shows another world, which is, in fact, as alienating as the works by Caravaggio. The altar panel by van Oost is didactic and decorous.29 It is not Tridentine because the subject matter, the Madonna and saints that are entirely justified in the hospital context, had already appeared in works created before the Trent period. 26 Bruges, Episcopal Archives, Acta Episcopatus, B17, 26v–27r, 15 April 1634/B18, 33r, 23 February 1638. 27 Ryckaert, ‘Enkele data in verband met de geschiedenis van Brugge en van het Sint-Janshospitaal’, 20. 28 The text ‘The Decree and the Didactic Solution’ by Marcia B. Hall, in her The Sacred Image in the Age of Art (New Haven/London: Yale University Press) 129–34, gives an idea of the why and how of the replacement of the Hans Memling triptych in the hospital church by the van Oost altar piece. It still demands more scientific research. 29 Marcia B. Hall, ‘Caravaggio, secularizing the sacred, sanctifying the secular’, in Hall, The Sacred Image, 256–61.

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The saints tell a nuanced story. Their spiritual qualities, for example, take priority over physical suffering in the scenes of martyrdom. The appearance of the saints, the sacred, is of human nature. The altarpiece is a work of indication, a work of conversion.30 The hospital’s religious community, patients and visitors must always remember the life of saints. The images are also a means of conversion. Jacob van Oost’s sedate Baroque style adds to the scene’s credibility. He tends to use static, theatrical compositions and is not afraid to include classical pillars and curtains; yet the figures never have excessively emotional expressions. They quietly undergo the celestial display. The calm of the main tableau is also apparent in the traditional colours used, with predominant reds and blues. Van Oost knew his masters and contemporaries well.31 While the painting Lamentation with Two Portraits of Hospital Sisters, attributed to Jacob van Oost the Elder and Jacob van Oost the Younger (1639–1713), dated 1665, matches the altarpiece stylistically, stronger emotions are more apparent here (fig. 35). The canvas is a work for private devotion and reminds one of a triptych but it is actually one single canvas without panels. Mary is portrayed in the centre, holding the body of her dead son on her lap. All the characters (the two women to the left and right, Christ and Mary, two angels, Mary Magdalene and St John and Joseph of Arimathea to the right) are portrayed in an emotional and dynamic scene. The four kneeling hospital sisters on the two side panels quietly observe the scene, overcome with devotion. Two nuns hold a rosary in their hands, the two others a prayer book. They are witnesses to the passion, which symbolises Christ’s role as the Saviour of humanity. They symbolise the people on earth who faithfully believe that they will go to heaven after death, through their piety. There is a hint of a vanitas theme. Charity, a basic concept in a hospital’s functioning, harmonises the secular and the sacred. The nuns represent the principle of charity at the hospital. The convent, the religious world on earth, is a precursor of heaven, which is suggested in the main tableau, in which Mary and her son play a prominent role. The hospital world is reflected in a single work of art. The suffering of Mary and Christ commands all one’s attention. The nuns are relegated to the side panels, but have the privilege of witnessing this sacred moment. Their gaze is distant, closed. They do not seem to be emotionally overwhelmed by the suffering in the centre panel, but look like privileged witnesses to this biblical event. The human nature of this scene is epitomised by the 30 Peter M. Lukehart, ‘Painting Virtuously. The Counter-Reformation and the Reform of Artist’s Education in Rome between Guild and Academy’, in Hall, Marcia B./Cooper, Tracy E. (ed.), The Sensuous in the Counter-Reformation Church (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2013) 161–86. 31 Hans Vlieghe, Catalogus schilderijen 17de en 18de eeuw, Stedelijke musea Brugge (Bruges: De vrienden van de Stedelijke Musea Brugge, 1994), 194.

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two men, the two women and the weeping angels, who do not look unworldly, in the centre panel. The composition of the centre panel is dynamic, something which is mainly due to the use of diagonals. The composition with the nuns is serene, balanced. Jacob van Oost does not eschew confrontation with the main theme. He prefers an unassuming narrative style which makes the canvas a meditation on the lamentation. The figure of Christ is ostensibly present, and the directness of the composition means that the onlooker becomes a participant in the scene. Trent loved it: because the Baroque style was perfectly suited to it. Mary Magdalene is fully and modestly clothed. She reminds us of the Magdalene figure on The Lamentation (Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York), an altarpiece painted by Scipione Pulzone in 1593 for the chapel of the Passion of Christ in the Church of the Gesù in Rome.32 The Madonna with Two Saints and Two Hospital Sisters, attributed to Jacob van Oost the Elder and dated 1664, portrays Isabelle Dailly kneeling on the extreme left, her hands folded in prayer and her coat draped over her arm (fig. 36). Next to her is Isabelle Briellmans, holding a prayer book in her right hand. St Elizabeth of Hungary, who is dressed as a convent nun, protects Isabelle Dailly. Isabelle Briellmans is presented to Mary by a saint with Christ’s monogram on her chest. St Augustine is seen kneeling to the right. The artist painted St John the Evangelist in the centre, recommending the nuns with a gesture of his arm. The three paintings present the onlooker with something unusual, and a kind of alienation is generated. The Madonna with Two Saints and Two Hospital Sisters on a single canvas is the most unusual of them all. The heavenly world with saints is portrayed too realistically and is too directly compared to the reality, the sisters, thereby creating a kind of distance. The spectator knows the group of saints depicted but at the same time is alienated. At the same time he is attracted by the heavenly occurrence in a theatrical, rather atmospheric setting. Van Oost’s ‘nun’ portraits combine portraits of nuns and saints, of the secular and celestial worlds. These artworks perpetuate the veneration of saints, which had taken place for centuries in the hospital. The works promote the spiritual welfare of the nuns and confirm the identity of the hospital community. They emphasise the significance of the continuity of the hospital’s operation to the outside world as being blessed by God and the saints, confirming the value of the hospital community’s identity to the religious and city authorities. Much as the Council of Trent supported the visual tradition of previous centuries through its directives concerning the veneration of saints and relics and the portrayal of 32 Opher Mansour, ‘Censure and Censorship in Rome, c. 1600, the Visitation of Clement VIII and the Visual Arts’, in Hall/Cooper (ed.), The Sensuous in the Counter-Reformation Church, 136–60.

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saints, the nuns also did this on a local scale. They are the undisputed local mediators/idealists, who implemented the reforms inspired by the Council of Trent on a small yet significant scale. They assure continuity, which is vital for self-preservation and is a guarantee that tradition will be preserved. The cult of St Apollonia in the hospital also bears witness to this. In 1546, an altar and chapel were dedicated to St Apollonia, St Anne and St Bridget in the St John’s hospital by Nicolaas de Bureau, titular bishop of Sarepta and assistant bishop of Tournai. The collection of Apollonia references also includes an ostensory for a relic dating from 1620 by Jacques de Cantere Jr.33 (fig. 37), the painting Ascension of St Apollonia from 1660 (fig. 38), attributed to Jacob van Oost the Elder,34 and a papal brief regarding the cult of St Apollonia in St John’s Hospital and the foundation of the guild, dating from 1651.35 A wooden, seventeenth-century sculpture, representing the saint, created by an as yet unknown artist, completes the Apollonia collection.36 It is not only the identity of the saint who is venerated in a given place and at a given time that is important, but the place where the saint’s portrait, sculpture or altar are installed and where the saint is venerated now also plays a key role. The Apollonia Chapel is located in the immediate vicinity of the hospital ward, as is the Cornelius Chapel and the church itself.37 The tangible presence of a saint transforms the space into a holy place, legitimising the cult. Tangible heritage defines the sacred nature of this devotional place.

33 Dominique Marechal, Meesterwerken van de Brugse edelsmeedkunst, catalogus (Bruges: Stichting Kunstboek, 1993), 78; Hilde Lobelle-Caluwé, Musée Memling Bruges (Bruxelles: Ludion/Cultura Nostra, 1987), 115. 34 Lobelle-Caluwé, Musée Memling Bruges, 94–5. 35 Bruges, Archives Sisters St John’s Hospital Bruges, Anonymous (1651), Papal brief relating to the foundation of and indulgences for the Guild of St Apollonia, paper, linen. Bruges, Archives Sisters St John’s Hospital Bruges, Letter of dedication of the side chapel and altar to St Anna, St Apollonia and St Bridget, 13 January 1546, parchment. 36 Jean Van Cleven, ‘De beeldhouwkunst na de middeleeuwen’, in Lobelle-Caluwé/Goetinck (ed.), Sint-Janshospitaal Brugge, 482–91, on 485. 37 Documents about the function of the St Cornelius and St Ghislain Guild and account documents (01. 05. 1586–30. 04. 1587 until 1739–08. 09. 1742) are kept in the Archives Sisters St John’s Hospital Bruges. A manuscript from 13 November 1609 illustrates the disagreement between the sisters and the guild with regard to the use of the Cornelius chapel in the St John’s Hospital as a hospital. The Acta Episcopatus, kept in the Bruges Episcopal Archives, also give information about the functioning of the guilds in hospital context.

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Conclusion The paintings of saints and the lives of saints, together with relics, serve as a source of inspiration for a devotionally inspired life, impregnated with a human dimension. This has always been the case in the hospital community, and is so even today. These artworks confirm the significance of the twofold history of devotional and medical care. Rather than undermine the importance of the hospital’s work, the Council of Trent helped perpetuate it. Moreover, thanks to, not despite, the Council of Trent, the importance of the hospital’s concern is continually honoured. The religious community of St John’s Hospital lived a determined devotionally/medically inspired life on the hospital site, which is visible in the works of art commissioned by them. In no way did they live isolated from society as the (in)tangible history of humane care illustrates.

Bibliography De Bruyne, Hilde, ‘Brugse zorg voor de burger in de 16de en 17de eeuw’, in Vandamme, Ludo/Boelaert, Johan R./Deneweth, Heidi et al. (ed.), Van chirurgijns tot pestheiligen. Ziek zijn in Brugge in de 16de en 17de eeuw: tentoonstelling 29 september 2011–26 februari 2012, Brugge, Memling in Sint-Jan – Hospitaalmuseum (Bruges: Vrienden van de Stedelijke Musea, 2011) 14–19. Dehaeck, Sigrid/Van Hee, Robrecht, ‘Van hospitaal naar virtueel ziekenhuis’, in Allegaert, Patrick/Basyn, Jean-Marc/Buyle, Marjan et al. (ed.), Architectuur van Belgische hospitalen (Bruxelles: Ministerie van de Vlaamse Gemeenschap – Afdeling Monumenten en Landschappen, 2004) 12–21. Duerloo, Luc, ‘Rijkdom en luister van de Nederlanden’, in Van de Velde, Carl/Duerloo, Luc/ Huysmans, Antoinette et al., Beeldhouwkunst van de Zuidelijke Nederlanden en het Prinsbisdom Luik 15de en 16de eeuw (Barcelona: Fundació La Caixa, 1999) 19–24. Esther, Jean-Pierre, ‘Monumentenbeschrijving en bouwgeschiedenis’, in Lobelle-Caluwé, Hilde/Goetinck, Marc (ed.), Sint-Janshospitaal Brugge 1888/1976 (Bruges: Die Keure, 1976), 265–85. Geldhof, Jozef, ‘De kloostergemeenschap van het Sint-Janshospitaal, 1459–1975’, in Lobelle-Caluwé, Hilde/Goetinck, Marc (ed.), Sint-Janshospitaal Brugge 1888/1976 (Bruges: Die Keure, 1976) 169–74. Goegebuer, Sibylla, ‘Een vrijgeleide naar de hemel. Heiligenverering in de 16e en 17e eeuw’, Museumbulletin Musea Brugge 3 (2011) 38–41. Goegebuer, Sibylla, ‘The Memling in Sint-Jan, Hospital Museum Re-Established as SintJanshospitaal Museum. A History of Continuity’, International Symposium ‘Documentary and Visual Sources for the Historical Study of Hospitals’ organised by the Institute for Research on Medieval Cultures of the University of Barcelona, Barcelona and L’Hospitalet de l’Infant, 17–19 April 2013 (unpublished paper).

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Goegebuer, Sibylla, ‘Museum en publiek’, Symposium Kunstgeschiedenis, University of Groningen, 5 September 2014 (unpublished paper). Hall, Marcia B., The Sacred Image in the Age of Art (New Haven/London: Yale University Press, 2011). Hall, Marcia B., ‘The Decree and the Didactic Solution’, in Hall, Marcia B., The Sacred Image in the Age of Art (New Haven/London: Yale University Press) 129–34. Hall, Marcia B., ‘Caravaggio, secularizing the sacred, sanctifying the secular’, in Hall, Marcia B., The Sacred Image in the Age of Art (New Haven/London: Yale University Press) 256–61. Henderson, John, ‘Healing the Body and Saving the Soul: Hospitals in Renaissance Florence’, Renaissance Studies 15/2 (1985) 189–216. Lobelle-Caluwé, Hilde, Musée Memling Bruges (Bruxelles: Ludion/Cultura Nostra, 1987). Lobelle-Caluwé, Hilde, Vroeger gasthuis, nu museum. Het middeleeuwse Sint-Janshospitaal te Brugge (Bruges: OCMW-AZ Sint-Jan, 1990). Lukehart, Peter M., ‘Painting Virtuously. The Counter-Reformation and the Reform of Artist’s Education in Rome between Guild and Academy’, in Hall, Marcia B./Cooper, Tracy E. (ed.), The Sensuous in the Counter-Reformation Church (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2013) 161–86. Mansour, Opher, ‘Censure and Censorship in Rome, c. 1600, the Visitation of Clement VIII and the Visual Arts’, in Hall, Marcia B./Cooper, Tracy E. (ed.), The Sensuous in the Counter-Reformation Church (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2013) 136–60. Marechal, Dominique, Meesterwerken van de Brugse edelsmeedkunst, catalogus (Bruges: Stichting Kunstboek, 1993). Maréchal, Griet, ‘Archivalia’, in Lobelle-Caluwé, Hilde/Goetinck, Marc (ed.), Sint-Janshospitaal Brugge 1888/1976 (Bruges: Die Keure, 1976) 342–59. Maréchal, Griet, ‘Het Sint-Janshospitaal in de eerste eeuwen van zijn bestaan’, in LobelleCaluwé, Hilde/Goetinck, Marc (ed.), Sint-Janshospitaal Brugge 1888/1976 (Bruges: Die Keure, 1976) 48–53. Maréchal, Griet, ‘Reglement van bisschop Jan VII Chevrot van Doornik voor het SintJanshospitaal (Rijsel, 1459 mei 16)’, in Lobelle-Caluwé, Hilde/Goetinck, Marc (ed.), SintJanshospitaal Brugge 1888/1976 (Bruges: Die Keure, 1976) 357. Maréchal, Griet, ‘Hospitalen tijdens de middeleeuwen’, in Allegaert, Patrick/Basyn, JeanMarc/Buyle, Marjan et al. (ed.), Architectuur van Belgische hospitalen (Bruxelles: Ministerie van de Vlaamse Gemeenschap – Afdeling Monumenten en Landschappen, 2004) 26–31. Ryckaert, Marc, ‘Enkele data in verband met de geschiedenis van Brugge en van het SintJanshospitaal’, in Lobelle-Caluwé, Hilde/Goetinck, Marc (ed.), Sint-Janshospitaal Brugge 1888/1976 (Bruges: Die Keure, 1976) 15–24. Steyaert, John W., ‘De beeldhouwkunst in het Sint-Janshospitaal. De middeleeuwse beeldhouwkunst’, in Lobelle-Caluwé, Hilde/Goetinck, Marc (ed.), Sint-Janshospitaal Brugge 1888/1976 (Bruges: Die Keure, 1976) 443–7. Van Cleven, Jean, ‘De beeldhouwkunst na de middeleeuwen’, in Lobelle-Caluwé, Hilde/ Goetinck, Marc (ed.), Sint-Janshospitaal Brugge 1888/1976 (Bruges: Die Keure, 1976) 482–91.

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Van den Berghe, Felix/Van den Heuvel, Jozef/Verhelst, Germana, De Zwartzusters van Brugge, Diksmuide, Oostende, Veurne en Brazilië (Bruges: Uitgeverij Marc Van de Wiele, 1986). Van Herck, Hanne, ‘Een gemeenschap van begijnen (13de–18de eeuw)’, in Coomans, Thomas/Bergmans, Anna (ed.), In zuiverheid leven. Het Sint-Agnesbegijnhof van SintTruiden, het hof, de kerk, de muurschilderingen (Bruxelles: Vlaams Instituut voor het Onroerend Erfgoed in samenwerking met de Provincie Limburg, 2009) 15–63. Vlieghe, Hans, Catalogus schilderijen 17de en 18de eeuw, Stedelijke musea Brugge (Bruges: De vrienden van de Stedelijke Musea Brugge, 1994).

Arts between political ambitions and confessional positions

Tamara Dominici

Erasmus of Rotterdam and Quentin Metsys: a reassessment1

Introduction During the sixteenth century there was what historians call ‘the rise of capitalism’: the great Augsburg banking houses rose together with the development of monopolies, such as Fugger’s exploitation of the South German copper mines, or the Portuguese crown’s of the spice trade. After the decline of Bruges and Ghent, Antwerp gained in importance and became a financial centre where capital could be raised for commercial and industrial ventures of every kind. The city, situated near the North Sea on a broad stretch of the river Scheldt, became a prosperous marketplace and port. The magistrates of Antwerp played an active role in encouraging and protecting the activities of the capitalist class. However, the organisation of economic life based on capitalist principles posed considerable theological difficulties for the Church. The outbreak of the Reformation did nothing to ease the tension between religious teaching in economic morality and economic practice.2 Given the circumstances, it is not surprising that merchants attracted the anger of moralists more than any other profession.3 For example, Erasmus’s Praise of Folly, which became one of the most popular texts of the sixteenth century, includes a scathing attack on the merchant class. The prosperity of Antwerp acted as a magnet for artists from all over the Netherlands, and the city became an important cultural centre.4 In this context Quentin Metsys5 1 The article summarises the main results of my MA thesis, Erasmo da Rotterdam e Quentin Metsys: ipotesi per un incontro (University of Urbino, 2013), supervised by Francesca Bottacin and Guido Dall’Olio. 2 Cf. Roland H. Bainton, La riforma protestante (Torino: Einaudi, 1958); Diarmaid MacCulloch, Riforma: la divisione della casa comune europea (1490–1700) (Roma: Carocci, 2010). 3 Cf. Keith Moxey, ‘The Criticism of Avarice in Sixteenth-Century Netherlandish Painting’, in Cavalli-Björkman, Görel (ed.), Netherlandish Mannerism (Stockholm: National Museum, 1985) 21–34. 4 Unfortunately records of sixteenth-century Antwerp are not very informative and it is ironic that one of the earliest full accounts of this centre and other towns in Netherlands is by an outsider, Lodovico Guicciardini. He published Descrittione di tutti i Paesi Bassi, altrimenti

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arrived there from his native Leuven and created numerous works with religious roots and satirical tendencies for over twenty years. It is in this city, in 1517, that Metsys, the leading Antwerp artist of the day, painted Erasmus of Rotterdam (fig. 39)6 and Peter Gillis, united in a diptych.7

The ‘friendship diptych’ Erasmus was a regular houseguest of Gillis’s in Antwerp between 1514 and 1521, and it was one of his visits that gave rise to the painting of Metsys’s portrait. The painter enjoyed a long friendship with Gillis and was eventually introduced to Erasmus. The secretary of magistrates in Antwerp was also a friend of Thomas More; the English scholar and Gillis had first met during More’s diplomatic mission to Flanders in 1515, the period in which Utopia was being written. The pendant portraits were a gift from the Antwerp pair to their mutual friend, Thomas More, whose letter is reproduced in the Gillis panel. On 30 May 1517, Erasmus wrote to Thomas More from Antwerp, where he was a guest of his friend Gillis, informing him that a double portrait was in the making: Petrus Aegidius et ego pingimur in eadem tabula: eam tibi dono breui mittemus. Verum incidit incommode quod reuersus Petrum offenderim nescio quo morbo laborantem grauiter, nec citra periculum; vnde nec adhunc satis reualuit. […] Dilata est igitur picture in dies aliquot, donec fiam Paulo alacrior.8

5

6 7

8

detti Germania inferiore (1567), a geopolitical description of the area which included a significant discussion of the artists. See Paolo Torresan, Il dipingere di Fiandra. La pittura neerlandese nella letteratura artistica italiana del Quattro e Cinquecento (Modena: Mucchi, 1981). Also known as Quinten Massys or Matsys. During the sixteenth century, Quentin Metsys was one of the leading members of the Flemish painting school in Antwerp. This topic can be followed in Max J. Friedländer, Die Altniederländische Malerei (Leiden: A.W. Sijthoff, 1934); Andrée de Bosque, Quentin Metsys (Bruxelles: Arcade, 1975); and specifically in Larry Silver, The Paintings of Quinten Massys with Catalogue Raisonné (Oxford: Phaidon, 1984). Concerning Erasmus of Rotterdam see Johan Huizinga, Erasmus and the Age of Reformation (New York: Harper & Brothers, 1957); Augustijn Cornelis, Erasmo da Rotterdam: la vita e l’opera (Brescia: Morcelliana, 1989). Fundamental for this topic is Georges Marlier, Erasme et la peinture flamande de son temps (Damme: Éditions du Museé van Maerlant, 1954). See also the articles which cite the relevant passages from the letters of Erasmus: Luigi Firpo’s essay in Desiderius Erasmus, Il lamento della pace (Torino: UTET, 1967) 139–207; Aloïs Gerlo, Erasme et ses portraitistes (Nieuwkoop: De Graaf, 21969); Erica Tietze-Conrat, ‘Erasmus von Rotterdam im Bilde’, in Tietze-Conrat, Erica (ed.), Die Frau in der Kunstwissenschaft: texte 1906–58 (Vienna: Schlebrügge Editor, 2007) 124–44. Desiderius Erasmus, Opus epistolarum des. Erasmi Roterodami, edited by Allen, Percy S./Allen, Helen M. (12 vols.; Oxford: Clarendon, 1906–58), vol. 2 (1906), 576 (epistle 584). English

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Later letters indicate that More was impatient to receive his gift, which had been delayed several times. The double portrait was completed on 9 September of the same year, and on 7 October 1517 the English scholar enthusiastically expressed his gratitude for the gift. These letters are the concrete documentation of Metsys’s most famous portrait, the image of Erasmus in his study, a painting completed by the adjacent figure of Peter Gillis. Several copies of these portraits testify to their popularity among the admirers of both Erasmus and Gillis, and, furthermore, More’s own laudatory letter shows his satisfaction with Metsys’s work.9 Gillis is depicted as the perfect example of the active humanist’s life, with symbols of his office, his prosperity and his learning: a furred gown and books. The image is animated by More’s letter to Gillis, which the town clerk of Antwerp holds ready to read to Erasmus. The great Rotterdam humanist occupies the same room as Gillis and he is shown, hard at work, translating St Paul’s epistle to the Romans. Metsys’s portrayal of the humanist was a popular way of depicting St Jerome and therefore the setting used in the portrait very probably alludes to the fact that Erasmus had just published a new edition of the writings of St Jerome. translation: ‘Peter Gillis and I are being painted in one picture, which we intend to send you as a present before long. But it unluckily happened that on my return I found that Peter had been attacked by a serious illness, from which he has not even now quite recovered […] I will write more at length within a month’s time, when I send the picture’, in Desiderius Erasmus, The epistles of Erasmus from his earliest letters to his fifty-first year, arranged in order of time: English translations from the early correspondence with a commentary confirming the chronological arrangement and supplying further biographical matter, edited by Nichols, Francis M. (3 vols.; London: Longman, Green and Co., 1901–18), vol. 2 (1904), 559 (epistle 563). 9 The portrait of Gillis survives in the collection of the Earl of Radnor, Longford Castle. The Radnor Gillis can be identified as an original Metsys by More’s description; it is the only panel of high quality displaying More’s handwriting on the letter in Gillis’s hands. The Barberini Erasmus has been determined to be an original Metsys by most scholars, e. g. Federico Hermanin, ‘Nuovi acquisti alla Galleria Nazionale d’Arte Antica a Palazzo Corsini in Roma’, Bollettino d’Arte del Ministero della Pubblica Istruzione 6 (1912) 369–82, but the Hampton Court version, although seemingly inferior in quality, features titles of works by Erasmus on the volumes within the panel. Phillips and Trapp consider this a persuasive argument for the originality of the Hampton Court image as More’s own. The Hampton Court’s Erasmus is almost exactly the same size as the original section of the Radnor Gillis. In provenance, Lord Radnor’s Gillis and Hampton Court’s Erasmus belong together. Both were once in the Collection of Charles I and both bear his crowned CR brand in a corresponding position on their backs. Quite possibly the Rome Erasmus, like the Antwerp Gillis, is also a replica done by Metsys himself. Detailed discussion of dimensions and historical provenience is given in Margaret M. Phillips, ‘The Mystery of the Massys Portrait’, Erasmus in English 7 (1975) 18–21; Joseph B. Trapp/Hubertus Schulte Herbrüggen (ed.), Sir Thomas More, 1477/8–1535: ‘The King’s Good Servant’ (London: National Portrait Gallery, 1977); Lorne Campbell/Margaret M. Phillips/Hubertus Schulte Herbrüggen et al., ‘Quentin Matsys, Desiderius Erasmus, Pieter Gillis and Thomas More’, The Burlington Magazine 120 (1978) 716–24; Joseph B. Trapp, ‘A Postscript to Matsys’, The Burlington Magazine 121 (1979) 434–7; Silver, Paintings of Quinten Massys.

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The diptych is a statement of the highly cultural climate of the time and a tribute to a three-way friendship. The successful interaction that resulted in the image helps to explain why Erasmus turned to Metsys, the son of a smith, just a couple of years later, to request a second portrait of himself; this time on a bronze medal.10 Erasmus’s letters leave no doubt that Quentin was the creator of this medal. Thomas More’s praise of Metsys in 1517 for the Erasmus and Gillis panels had already suggested the subsequent casting of Erasmus’s likeness in metal: […] Quintine o veteris nouator artis, Magno non minor artifex Apelle, Mire composito potens colore Vitam adfingere mortuis figuris; Hei cur effigies labore tanto Factas tam bene talium virorum, Quales prisca tulere secla raros, Quales tempora nostra rariores Quales haud scio post futura an vllos, Te iuuit fragili indidisse ligno, Dandas materie fideliori, Quae seruare datas queat perhennes? O si sic poteras tuaeque famae et Votis consuluisse posterorum! […]11

The medal contains, on its obverse, Erasmus’s profile, the date and a pair of inscriptions. The first inscription, in Greek ‘ΤΗΝ ΚΡΕΙΤΤΩ ΤΑ ΣΥΓΓΡΑΜΜΑΤΑ ΔΕΙΞΕΙ’, reads: ‘the better image will his writing show’. That is, the portrait shows an authentic likeness, but it is in his writings that we are provided with a more complete picture of the humanist. The reverse side depicts Erasmus’s symbol, the classical deity Terminus, motto ‘CONCEDO NVLLI’ (‘I yield to no one’) and the inscription ‘ΟΡΑ ΤΕΛΟΣ ΜΑΚΡΟΥ ΒΙΟΥ – MORS VLTIMA LINEA RERVM’ (‘Consider the end of a long life – death is the ultimate limit of things’). The motto alludes to the story, related by many classical authors, according to which Terminus was the only god to refuse to give way when Jupiter

10 For the medal of Metsys see Erwin Panofsky, ‘Erasmus and the Visual Art’, Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes 32 (1969) 200–7 and especially Silver, Paintings of Quinten Massys, appendix A, 243–4. 11 Erasmus, Opus epistolarum, vol. 3 (1915), 106–7 (epistle 684). English translation: ‘Quintine, restorer of an ancient art, / Rival of great Apelles, nor less skilled / To impart with wondrous colours a feigned life / To forms inanimate, when thou portrayest / So perfectly, with so great pains, such men / As ancient Times could rarely show, our Times / More rarely, and a future Day perchance / Shall seek in vain, -ah! wherefore hast thou chosen / To trance their images on fragile wood, / That should be fixed on substance durable / To guard them from the ravages of Times? / Thus might’st thou have both made thy fame more sure, / And gratified the eyes of future men’, in Erasmus, The epistles of Erasmus, vol. 3 (1918), 93 (epistle 654).

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decided to have his temple on the Capitoline Hill. Later, this same legend, the Greek phrase that translates: ‘The better image will his writings show’ appeared on the engraved portrait of Erasmus, completed by Albrecht Dürer in 1526.12 Dürer was certainly one of the three great artists to whom Erasmus was linked through personal acquaintance.13 The other two were Hans Holbein the Younger and, of course, Quentin Metsys. They all served him as portraitists and in turn were influenced by his philosophy of life.

The Praise of Folly and Metsys’s secular images Metsys was influenced in particular by Erasmus’s Praise of Folly,14 as can be seen in the ‘social criticism’ implied by some of his paintings. Erasmus, and the portrait commissioned, acted like a catalyst for the artist, which caused a major reaction without, however, permanently affecting the final result. Metsys’s relationship with Erasmus probably influenced the changes in his later artistic period. Like most northern humanists, Erasmus was ‘primarily interested in the written word and only secondarily in the word accessible to the eye’.15 The humanist was not an iconoclast, but ‘like all good theologians he insisted that what is venerable in a picture is not its material image but the idea it represents, not the signa but the divi ipsi’.16 Erasmus’s own comments on religious art show a severe sense of propriety: propriety, morality, and the proper image of Christ and the saints were the aim of Erasmus’s iconophilism. What is important, in order to understand the relationship between Erasmus’s ideas about religious art and Metsys’s paintings, is the degree to which the final period of his work seems to pick up the ethical commitment of the humanist and his overall programme of religious education. But the humanist’s spirit of moral education seems to pervade all the artist’s

12 Cf. Philipp Fehl, ‘Dürer’s Portrait of Erasmus and the Medal by Quentin Massys: Two Types of Mimesis’, in Gaehtgens, Thomas W. (ed.), Künstlerischer Austausch. Artistic Exchange. XXVIII. Internationalen Kongreß für Kunstgeschichte Berlin 1992 (3 vols.; Berlin: Akademie Verlag, 1993) vol. 2, 453–72. 13 Cf. Albrecht Dürer, Tagebuch der Reise in die Niederlande (Leipzig: F.A. Brockhaus, 1884). 14 The Praise of Folly by Erasmus was an extremely popular work: a satirical attack on superstitions and other traditions of European society in general and the western Church in particular. The book, published under the title Encomium Moriae, was written in 1509, printed in 1511, and dedicated to Sir Thomas More. Numerous versions of the Praise of Folly were published, including translations from Latin into French and German. See Desiderius Erasmus, The Praise of Folly (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1958). 15 Panofsky, ‘Erasmus and the Visual Art’, 204. 16 Ibid., 207.

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work, especially in the secular images, many of which also seem to have strong affinities with some pages in the Praise of Folly. The moral value expressed by Metsys’s later work can be explained in the light of the influence of Erasmus’s Christian and pre-Reformation philosophy. In the view of both the Flemish painter and Erasmus, the moral dimension of religion is revealed through satire in the secular realm. The vision of moral ugliness is both an admonition and an exhortation for a proper Christian conduct. Metsys’s secular paintings are the path towards a more righteous life because they use a negative yet distant image to suggest the ugliness and foolishness of the sinful way. This is the reason why the artist’s secular works frequently have outlandish and outmoded costumes, generally borrowed from images of the previous century. By presenting the characters of the secular paintings historically, as well as morally, distant, Metsys provides an even greater sense of detachment between the viewer and the moral turpitude of the paintings. The use of grotesque features heightens this effect, which was generally borrowed from Leonardo da Vinci’s drawings, for secular subjects. Godliness begins with good living for Erasmus, and the same message becomes visible in Metsys’s secular works. From his very first surviving secular painting, The Money Changer and His Wife (fig. 40), it is evident that the artist from Antwerp believed man to be capable of righteous conduct, despite temptation. Here, unlike the majority of his secular paintings, there is no emphasis on the grotesque, and no evidence that foolish or sinful activity is taking place. Most of the critical commentary on this image focusses on its potential satire of moneychanging as a reprehensible occupation and on the significance of the wife’s turning away from prayer to the lure of the coins. In visual counterpoint, the active life of commerce and the contemplative life of prayer are combined here by the husband and wife’s behaviour.17 The prudent caution and dignity of The Money Changer and His Wife give way to a sharper moral and critical vision in the later satirical grotesques. The major interest of the Money Changer painting is the element of choice, while the painting Banker and His Client, the original of which is now lost but which is preserved in numerous copies,18 depicts a type of behaviour lacking alternatives. The faces of the banker and his client are aggressively ugly, and the artist’s ethical attitude is clearly negative in regard to their fiscal transactions. Erasmus also censured the sinfulness of wealth in the Praise of Folly: 17 Cf. Caterina Limentani Virdis, ‘Moralismo e satira nella tarda produzione di Quentin Metsys’, Storia dell’arte 20 (1974) 19–24 and John F. Moffitt, ‘Quentin Metsys’s The Money Changer and His Wife (1514) and the Christological Speculum Humanae Salvationis’, Arte Cristiana 96 (2008) 359–64 for different interpretations. 18 Only Puyvelde believed the Paris version (Cailleux collection) to be an original by the painter. Marlier, on the other hand, believed the Windsor panel to be an accurate replica of a lost Metsys prototype.

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But the most foolish and basest of all others are our merchants, to wit such as venture on everything be it never so dishonest, and manage it no better; who though they lie by no allowance, swear and forswear, steal, cozen, and cheat, yet shuffle themselves into the first rank, and all because they have gold rings on their fingers.19

The subject matter is that of a lost van Eyck panel seen in about 1530 by Marcantonio Michiel in Milan.20 Actually, if we accept the opinion of the Italian scholar Caterina Limentani Virdis, stating that the frescoes of the Cistercian abbey of Chiaravalle near Milan were painted by Metsys, the artist must have been in Italy during the first decade of the sixteenth century. This might help to support the idea of a trip by Quentin south of the Alps, a topic which will be discussed later in this essay. According to Panofsky, the conformity between The Ugly Duchess (fig. 41) and Erasmus’s book, in which the author describes a mad old woman who still plays ‘the coquette’, is also relevant.21 The effects of the huge ears, wrinkles and ape-like face are merely emphasised by the ridiculous hat. The woman is made even more repugnant by the rich jewels she is wearing and the indiscretion of her low-cut dress. This painting is a brilliant exercise in the use of the grotesque based on a caricature by Leonardo da Vinci.22 Metsys’s next secular work, the Ill–Matched Lovers (fig. 42), continues his attack on human folly through grotesque figures in action. This painting provides a clear illustration of the ideas that old age, especially lecherous old age, leads to foolishness and that a woman’s sexual powers cause men to behave absurdly and lose their wits and their money. Women are the cause of much of the temptation and sensuality in the world, according to Erasmus, who contrasts their beauty with the roughness of men, as Metsys does in painting:23

19 Erasmus, Praise of Folly, 29. 20 Cf. Marcantonio Michiel, Notizia d’opere di disegno nella prima metà del secolo XVI, esistenti in Padova, Cremona, Milano, Pavia, Bergamo, Crema e Venezia. Scritta da un anonimo di quel tempo. Pubblicata e illustrata da D. Iacopo Morelli (Bassano, 1800), 45: ‘in casa de M. Camillo Lampognano, ovver suo padre M. Nicolò a Milano. El quadretto a mezze figure, del patron che fa conto con el fattor fu de man de Zuan Heic, credo Memelino, Ponentino, fatto nel 1440’. 21 Cf. Erasmus, Praise of Folly, 18. 22 Paired with Old Man, now in the collection of a New York gallery. The two panels have identical dimensions, a green background and marble strip; moreover, the raised hands of the Old Man cannot be understood without reference to the gesture of the Ugly Duchess who offers him a rosebud. They were engraved by Wenzel Hollar who attributed the figures to Leonardo da Vinci. In fact, a drawing of Leonardo was the immediate source for Metsys’s Ugly Duchess; there is no original drawing for Old Man. Cf. William Baillie-Grohman, ‘A Portrait of the Ugliest Princess in History’, The Burlington Magazine 217 (1921) 172–8; Larry Silver, ‘Power and Pelf: a New-Found Old Man by Massys’, Simiolus 9 (1977) 63–97. 23 Cf. Larry Silver, ‘The Ill–Matched Pair by Quinten Massys’, Studies in the History of Art 6 (1974) 105–24; Silver, Paintings of Quinten Massys.

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Another falls desperately in love with a young wench and keeps more flickering about her than a young man would have been ashamed of. For to see such an old crooked piece with one foot in the grave to marry a plump young wench, and that too without a portion, is so common that men almost expect to be commended for it.24 In Metsys’s image of Two Praying Monks,25 hypocrisy in the form of false saintliness is expressly condemned, echoing Erasmus’s words. Typically Erasmian, this emphasis on true, inner piety opposed to outward, ceremonial observance is also underlined in Metsys’s painting and shows the artist’s continual affinity with the humanist.

And next these come those that commonly call themselves the religious and monks, most false in both titles, when both a great part of them are farthest from religion, and no men swarm thicker in all places than themselves […]. For first, they reckon it one of the main points of piety if they are so illiterate that they can’t so much as read.26 Another image seems to incorporate within a single, fully secular face, the essence of Erasmus’s comic censure. This image, a bust-length presentation of a laughing man, probably represents the philosopher Democritus, who serves as the alter ego of the humanist, laughing at the follies of the world.27 Even in the book’s introduction, the humanist singles out his English friend More as one who ‘in the whole course of your life have played the part of a Democritus’.28 In the dissertation Erasmus frequently goes as far as to identify himself and his comic writing with this laughing philosopher. The same meaning is conveyed by Metsys’s Fool, also painted during the artist’s final years of activity.29 Unlike Erasmus’s female personification, Dame Folly, Metsys’s Fool is male, but the role of the fool as expressed by Erasmus’s Praise of Folly is the same: sharp truth with comic pleasure. Satires in painting were meant to delight as well as to instruct. The secular subject brought Metsys closer to the popular culture of his time as well as to the attitudes of the literary society of Antwerp, rederijkers, and Erasmus. Particularly striking are the affinities between several of Metsys’s secular paintings and the Praise of Folly; coincidences that cannot be considered random. There are several secular images of Quentin which seem to have been created directly out of the 24 Erasmus, Praise of Folly, 18. 25 The best version of the picture is in Palazzo Doria Pamphilj, Rome. Puyvelde claimed that the Doria version is an unfinished Metsys original, later completed by another artist. Actually none of the surviving versions appears to be by Quentin’s own hand. 26 Erasmus, Praise of Folly, 36. 27 Cf. Silver, Paintings of Quinten Massys. 28 Erasmus, Praise of Folly, 2. 29 See Larry Silver, ‘Prayer and Laughter: Erasmian Elements in Two Late Metsys Panels’, Erasmus in English 9 (1978) 17–23.

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literary impulse derived from the Rotterdam humanist. In the artist’s satirical works, Erasmus was the source of the ideological inspiration, and in some cases Leonardo was the iconological model, even if one must not forget its entirely Flemish character.

A journey to Italy The last part of this research then suggests that a journey to Italy by Erasmus, and perhaps by Metsys, in the first decade of the sixteenth century may have had an influence on their later relationship and may have helped the painter to understand the spirit of Erasmus’s writings better. From 1506 to 1509, Erasmus was in Italy; in Turin he received, upon his arrival, the degree of doctor of theology and later he visited Bologna, Venice, Padua and Rome:30 Vbi promissa non apparerent, petiit Italiam; cuius adeundae desiderio semper arserat. Egit paulo plus quam annum Bononiae, iam vergente aetate, hoc est ferme quadragenarius. Inde contulit se Venetias et edidit Adagia; inde Patauium, vbi hibernauit; mox Romam, quo iam fama celebris ac plausibilis praecesserat.31

When he arrived in Rome in late winter of 1509, he found a warm welcome, for his publications, especially the Aldine edition of the Adages and perhaps some of his translations from Greek, had established his reputation as a skilled classical scholar. All the charms of the Eternal City were laid open to him, and he must have felt keenly gratified by the consideration and courtesy with which cardinals and prelates, such as Giovanni de’ Medici, later Leo X, Domenico Grimani, Raffaello Riario and others, treated him. It seems he was even offered a post in the curia. Cardinal Grimani, Erasmus asserts, tried to retain him, but in vain. In July 1509 he left Rome and Italy. There is nothing to show that he was impressed by the beauty of Italy in the Renaissance. Only books seemed to have occupied and attracted Erasmus to Italy. Back in England by 1509, disappointed with the wars among the Church and the weaknesses of its clergy, the humanist scholar wrote Encomium Moriae, the commentary on the obstacles that were restricting the fulfilment of Christ’s teachings. 30 Important sources about Erasmus’s journey to Italy are Silvana Seidel Menchi, Erasmo in Italia, 1520–1580 (Torino: Bollati Boringhieri, 1987) and Augustin Renaudet, Erasme et l’Italie (Genève: Librairie Droz, 1998). 31 Compendium vitae Erasmi, in Erasmus, Opus epistolarum, vol. 1, 51. Erasmus carried out a long-desired journey to Italy. He was forty years old when he went to Bologna, where he remained for more than one year. Then the humanist left Bologna for Venice and here he published the edition of the Adagia; he spent the winter in Padua. From Padua Erasmus moved to Rome where he already had a good reputation.

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On the other hand, it is difficult to prove whether Metsys had ever travelled to Italy.32 No documentation survives in order to establish how the Leuven artist could have been familiar with Leonardo’s grotesques, but his visual borrowings provide evidence that the painter had access to Leonardo’s drawings, particularly the Five Grotesque Heads (fig. 43).33 Quentin Metsys was undoubtedly one of the first Flemish painters to show an interest in Italy, and his Madonnas with Child prove his thorough assimilation of Leonardo’s delicacy. Metsys seems to have turned to the art of Italy. Strong evidence exists to support the idea of a trip by Quentin south of the Alps. The Leuven artist borrowed Leonardo’s study of drawing, for example in his Martyrdom of St John the Evangelist (fig. 44). On this wing of Antwerp altarpiece from 1508–11 for the joiners’ guild, Metsys incorporated three of the Five Grotesque Heads among the tormentors beside the saint; Leonardo’s image was simply reversed and reused for the Ill–Matched Lovers. Metsys’s other borrowings from Leonardo, including the Ugly Duchess pendant, lead to the question as to whether the Old Man, too, might have been based on models of the Italian painter. Quentin used the same profile head for the Old Man in Paris; this image is painted not on a panel but on paper and it is signed in a unique fashion, with a Latin inscription in block letters.34 According to Caterina Limentani Virdis, Metsys lived in Italy and painted the wall frescoes in the small oratory of the Chiaravalle Abbey (fig. 45) during this period.35 The work shows similarities both in the use of the grotesque faces and in chromatic agreements with Quentin’s paintings. From the analysis of the Italian scholar, supported by countless and specific stylistic references, the probable authorship of Metsys of the paintings of Chiaravalle has emerged. Moreover, there are frescoes painted by the artist in his home in Antwerp in 1581, proven by sources.36 The difficult technique, which was extremely rare in Flanders, was 32 See also Tamara Dominici, ‘Quentin Metsys e l’Italia: immagini di un viaggio’, Studiolo 13 (2016) 10–29. 33 For a discussion of Metsys’s use of Leonardo’s Five Grotesque Heads drawing at Windsor Castle, see Larry Silver, ‘The Ill–Matched Pair by Quinten Massys’, Studies in the History of Art 6 (1974) 105–24. 34 Both the paper support and the Latin inscription suggest that this was an unusual project for the artist. The Paris profile bears a striking resemblance to Jacopo Pontormo’s posthumous portrait of Cosimo de’ Medici. In fact ‘that both the features and the headgear of Massys and Pontormo agree so closely cannot be coincidence. We must assume that the two artists portrayed the same subject: Cosimo de’ Medici’ (Silver, ‘Power and Pelf ’, 70). They probably used a common source or were linked as prototype and adaptation. 35 See Caterina Limentani Virdis, ‘Una proposta per Chiaravalle: Quentin Metsys’, Osservatorio delle Arti 3 (1989) 52–8; Caterina Limentani Virdis, ‘Metsys a Chiaravalle’, FMR 11 (1992) 30– 3. For a different interpretation, cf. Federico Cavalieri, ‘Una nuova presenza oltremontana nella pittura milanese di età sforzesca’, Nuovi Studi. Rivista di arte antica e moderna 3 (1998) 29–37; see there for further bibliography. 36 If Alexander van Fornenbergh’s account of the interior of the second house can be trusted

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practised almost exclusively in Italy, so his knowledge can be best explained by way of his direct contact with the vibrant artistic environment of this country. In Rome, Erasmus also visited the residence of Cardinal Domenico Grimani.37 The relationship between the two is demonstrated in the latter’s correspondence with the theologian. The Venetian cardinal, who made a brilliant career in the ranks of the Church and who owned a large number of Netherlandish works, left most of his paintings to be displayed in the Doge’s Palace. The Ecce Homo by Quentin Metsys (fig. 46), also admired by Francesco Sansovino in the Doge’s Palace, must have reached Venice shortly after it was painted. In 1581, the man of letters saw the painting: ‘La palla del cui Altare, con un Christo flagellato è nobilissima quanta altra si sia nella Città, & fu di mano di un Fiammingo’.38 It may be one of the paintings bequeathed to the Venetian state by Cardinal Domenico Grimani. The work presents several similarities with a painting of the same subject, Ecce Homo by Correggio, dated around 1520.39 Christ is depicted in the same position, meaning that Correggio had probably seen the painting in the Doge’s Palace or one of its reproductions in the Veneto region. For this reason, Metsys’s Ecce Homo must have been in Venice in 1520, further reinforcing the theory that Domenico Grimani was his customer.40 The iconography is explained precisely only in the Gospel of John and represents the scene in which Pilate, saying ‘Ecce homo’, shows Christ to the crowd from his palace, after the flagellation and the coronation of thorns. The exposure of Christ to the people, allowing him to be mocked by them, concludes his

37

38 39

40

and can be attributed to Metsys, it was indeed a splendidly decorated site, with a frieze of Italianate ornamentation, such as grotesques and festoons. This information appeared in a book of the Antwerp art restorer in 1658. The title of this text is extravagant: Den Antwerpschen Protheus, ofte Cyclopschen Apelles; dat is: Het leven,ende konstrijcke daden des uytnemenden, ende hoogh-beroemden Mr. Quinten Matsys: van grof-smidt in fyn-schilder verandert… Domenico Grimani (1461–1523) was an Italian theologian. He exhibited an early predilection for humanist studies, for which he was encouraged by teachers in his native Venice. He became a cardinal in 1493. After a period as apostolic administrator in Nicosia, he was Patriarch of Aquileia, a position he abandoned on behalf of his nephew Marino in 1517. From 1514, he was named administrator of the diocese of Urbino and bishop of Ceneda (1517–20). Cf. Pio Paschini, Domenico Grimani, cardinale di S. Marco († 1523) (Roma: Edizioni di Storia e Letteratura, 1943). Francesco Sansovino, Venetia città nobilissima et singolare descritta (Venezia, 1581), 325. Cf. John K.G. Shearman, Arte e spettatore nel Rinascimento italiano (Milano: Jaca Book, 1995), 38–9; Maddalena Bellavitis, ‘Tra Fiandre e Italia, alcuni passaggi per un’iconografia dell’Ecce Homo’, in Caramanna, Claudia/Macola, Novella/Nazzi, Laura (ed.), Citazioni, modelli e tipologie nella produzione dell’opera d’arte (Padova: Cleup, 2011) 263–9. See Caterina Limentani Virdis, ‘La fortuna dei fiamminghi a Venezia nel Cinquecento’, Arte Veneta 32 (1979) 141–5 and especially Lorne Campbell, ‘Notes on Netherlandish Pictures in the Veneto in the Fifteenth and Sixteenth Centuries’, The Burlington Magazine 123 (1981) 467–73.

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religious and civil trial, which is the last stage in the Passion before the Crucifixion. Metsys’s painting is a tour de force of physiognomy, ranging from the pathetic to the grotesque, the ridiculous and the openly repulsive. The image also presents some familiarities with several of Bellini’s paintings of the deceased Christ. This would allow us to uphold the theory that Metsys was in Venice, where he could have come into contact with some models from the Bellini’s workshop. Furthermore the iconography of tied hands reflects a detail in Chiaravalle’s frescoes, another aspect in favour of the paternity of Metsys images. To conclude, I believe that the Venetian cardinal could be a key figure, a trait d’union, between Erasmus and Metsys in Italy, and it is from this assertion that we should restart in order to understand fully the connection between the theologian and the painter.41 Grimani could be seen as proof that the humanist and the artist frequented the same environment and cultural scene in this country. Erasmus and Metsys may not have met in Italy, but Italy influenced their subsequent activity, and it could reasonably be recognised as the link between two figures that were so distant and yet so close, united by the common struggle against vice and corruption.

Bibliography Baillie-Grohman, William, ‘A Portrait of the Ugliest Princess in History’, The Burlington Magazine 217 (1921) 172–8. Bainton, Roland H., La riforma protestante (Torino: Einaudi, 1958). Bellavitis, Maddalena, ‘Tra Fiandre e Italia, alcuni passaggi per un’iconografia dell’Ecce Homo’, in Caramanna, Claudia/Macola, Novella/Nazzi, Laura (ed.), Citazioni, modelli e tipologie nella produzione dell’opera d’arte (Padova: Cleup, 2011) 263–9. Bosque, Andrée de, Quentin Metsys (Bruxelles: Arcade, 1975). Campbell, Lorne, ‘Notes on Netherlandish Pictures in the Veneto in the Fifteenth and Sixteenth Centuries’, The Burlington Magazine 123 (1981) 467–73. Campbell, Lorne/Phillips, Margaret M./Schulte Herbrüggen, Hubertus et al., ‘Quentin Matsys, Desiderius Erasmus, Pieter Gillis and Thomas More’, The Burlington Magazine 120 (1978) 716–24. 41 Some useful information could be deduced from a careful inspection of the Grimani of Santa Maria Formosa archive group, bb. 8 (secc. XV–XIX); parchm. II (1457–1592, 1771), inventory 1984, in the State Archives in Venice. Here there are the private papers relating to family relationships, to the palaces in Venice and Rome, to the goods in the mainland, and other public interest affairs, including Domenico Grimani. My search in the Archives, however, has proved negative; in particular, I have examined envelope 1 and in detail wills and divisions from 1516 to 1638. Additional information about the problem could perhaps also be gathered from inspection of wills, unopened until now, such as that of Antonio Grimani, 1583 April 6, Proceedings of Crivelli.

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Cavalieri, Federico, ‘Una nuova presenza oltremontana nella pittura milanese di età sforzesca’, Nuovi Studi. Rivista di arte antica e moderna 3 (1998) 29–37. Cornelis, Augustijn, Erasmo da Rotterdam: la vita e l’opera (Brescia: Morcelliana, 1989). Dominici, Tamara, ‘Quentin Metsys e l’Italia: immagini di un viaggio’, Studiolo 13 (2016) 10–29. Dürer, Albrecht, Tagebuch der Reise in die Niederlande (Leipzig: F.A. Brockhaus, 1884). Erasmus, Desiderius, The epistles of Erasmus from his earliest letters to his fifty-first year, arranged in order of time: English translations from the early correspondence with a commentary confirming the chronological arrangement and supplying further biographical matter, edited by Nichols, Francis M. (3 vols.; London: Longman, Green and Co., 1901–18). Erasmus, Desiderius, Opus epistolarum Des. Erasmi Roterodami, edited by Allen, Percy S./ Allen, Helen M. (12 vols.; Oxford: Clarendon, 1906–58). Erasmus, Desiderius, The Praise of Folly (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1958). Erasmus, Desiderius, Il lamento della pace (Torino: UTET, 1967). Fehl, Philipp, ‘Dürer’s Portrait of Erasmus and the Medal by Quentin Massys: Two Types of Mimesis’, in Gaehtgens, Thomas W. (ed.), Künstlerischer Austausch. Artistic Exchange. XXVIII. Internationalen Kongreß für Kunstgeschichte. Berlin 1992 (3 vols.; Berlin: Akademie Verlag, 1993) vol. 2, 453–72. Friedländer, Max J., Die Altniederländische Malerei (Leiden: A.W. Sijthoff, 1934). Gerlo, Aloïs, Erasme et ses portraitistes (Nieuwkoop: De Graaf, 21969). Guicciardini, Lodovico, Descrittione di tutti i Paesi Bassi, altrimenti detti Germania inferiore (Antwerp, 1567). Hermanin, Federico, ‘Nuovi acquisti alla Galleria Nazionale d’Arte Antica a Palazzo Corsini in Roma’, Bollettino d’Arte del Ministero della Pubblica Istruzione 6 (1912) 369–82. Huizinga, Johan, Erasmus and the Age of Reformation (New York: Harper & Brothers, 1957). Limentani Virdis, Caterina, ‘Moralismo e satira nella tarda produzione di Quentin Metsys’, Storia dell’arte 20 (1974) 19–24. Limentani Virdis, Caterina, ‘La fortuna dei fiamminghi a Venezia nel Cinquecento’, Arte Veneta 32 (1979) 141–5. Limentani Virdis, Caterina, ‘Una proposta per Chiaravalle: Quentin Metsys’, Osservatorio delle Arti 3 (1989) 52–8. Limentani Virdis, Caterina, ‘Metsys a Chiaravalle’, FMR 11 (1992) 30–3. MacCulloch, Diarmaid, Riforma: la divisione della casa comune europea (1490–1700) (Roma: Carocci, 2010). Marlier, Georges, Erasme et la peinture flamande de son temps (Damme: Éditions du Museé van Maerlant, 1954). Michiel, Marcantonio, Notizia d’opere di disegno nella prima metà del secolo XVI, esistenti in Padova, Cremona, Milano, Pavia, Bergamo, Crema e Venezia. Scritta da un anonimo di quel tempo. Pubblicata e illustrata da D. Iacopo Morelli (Bassano, 1800). Moffitt, John F., ‘Quentin Metsys’s The Money Changer and His Wife (1514) and the Christological Speculum Humanae Salvationis’, Arte Cristiana 96 (2008) 359–64. Moxey, Keith, ‘The Criticism of Avarice in Sixteenth-Century Netherlandish Painting’, in Cavalli-Björkman, Görel (ed.), Netherlandish Mannerism (Stockholm: National Museum, 1985) 21–34.

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Nolhach, Pierre de, Erasme et l’Italie (Paris: Les Cahiers de Paris, 1925). Panofsky, Erwin, ‘Erasmus and the Visual Art’, Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes 32 (1969) 200–7. Paschini, Pio, Domenico Grimani, cardinale di S. Marco († 1523) (Roma: Edizioni di Storia e Letteratura, 1943). Phillips, Margaret M., ‘The Mystery of the Massys Portrait’, Erasmus in English 7 (1975) 18–21. Renaudet, Augustin, Erasme et l’Italie (Genève: Librairie Droz, 1998). Sansovino, Francesco, Venetia città nobilissima et singolare descritta (Venezia, 1581). Seidel Menchi, Silvana, Erasmo in Italia, 1520–1580 (Torino: Bollati Boringhieri, 1987). Shearman, John K.G., Arte e spettatore nel Rinascimento italiano (Milano: Jaca Book, 1995). Silver, Larry, ‘The Ill–Matched Pair by Quinten Massys’, Studies in the History of Art 6 (1974) 105–24. Silver, Larry, ‘Power and Pelf: a New-Found Old Man by Massys’, Simiolus 9 (1977) 63–97. Silver, Larry, ‘Prayer and Laughter: Erasmian Elements in Two Late Metsys Panels’, Erasmus in English 9 (1978) 17–23. Silver, Larry, The Paintings of Quinten Massys with Catalogue Raisonné (Oxford: Phaidon, 1984). Tietze-Conrat, Erica, ‘Erasmus von Rotterdam im Bilde’, in Tietze-Conrat, Erica (ed.), Die Frau in der Kunstwissenschaft: texte 1906–58 (Vienna: Schlebrügge Editor, 2007) 124–44. Torresan, Paolo, Il dipingere di Fiandra. La pittura neerlandese nella letteratura artistica italiana del Quattro e Cinquecento (Modena: Mucchi, 1981). Trapp, Joseph B., ‘A Postscript to Matsys’, The Burlington Magazine 121 (1979) 434–7. Trapp, Joseph B./Schulte Herbrüggen, Hubertus (ed.), Sir Thomas More, 1477/8–1535: ‘The King’s Good Servant’ (London: National Portrait Gallery, 1977).

Insa Christiane Hennen

The so-called ‘Reformation Altarpiece’ by the Cranach workshop and the restyling of the Wittenberg town church between 1500 and 16001

Changes to the interior furnishings of the Wittenberg town church Before the Reformation, the high altar dedicated to St Mary dominated the interior of the eponymous Wittenberg town church. Moreover, the church had at least eighteen other altars. In 1522, the Wittenberg town council issued ‘Ain lobliche ordnung’ (‘A Worthy Order’) in order to reorganise the finances of the church and its social-welfare work.2 Part of the lobliche ordnung, written by Andreas Bodenstein (known as Karlstadt), is an article demanding the removal of images from churches. In 1536, fourteen years later, church accounts3 document expenses for the dismantling of altars, which took one hundred twelve days, and a second campaign of removing altars took place in 1543. On the other hand, money was gained from the sale of liturgical furnishings and was documented between 1525 and about 1560. Textiles, candlesticks and even some pictures were sold for the benefit of the church funds, for example, in 1560 an embroidery with a picture of St Mary. However, complete altarpieces are not mentioned, presumably because the brotherhoods who had donated these works removed them from their altars in the church.

1 For a much more detailled version with a comprehensive bibliography, see Insa C. Hennen, ‘Die Ausstattung der Wittenberger Stadtpfarrkirche und der Cranach’sche Reformationsaltar’, in Lück, Heiner/Bünz, Enno/Helten, Leonhard et al. (ed.), Das ernestinische Wittenberg: Spuren Cranachs in Schloss und Stadt (Petersberg: Michael Imhof Verlag, 2015) 401–22. The author thanks very much Rev. David Mahsman for helping with the translation. 2 Andreas Karlstadt, Von abtuhung der Bylder (Wittenberg, 1522); Andreas Karlstadt, Ain lobliche ordnung der Fürstlichen stat Wittemberg (Speyer: Johann Eckhart, 1522). 3 This essay is based on archive researches in the Ratsarchiv Wittenberg and the Stadtkirchenarchiv Wittenberg focussing on the accounts of the town council (1500–1600) and the Common Chest (1526–1600). For the exact quotation, see Hennen, ‘Die Ausstattung der Wittenberger Stadtpfarrkirche und der Cranach’sche Reformationsaltar’.

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Here we deal with the question of iconoclasm at Wittenberg for the future and consider the Cranach altarpiece along with the circumstances of its origin (fig. 47–8).4 The Wittenberg town church has been the central place for memorials and social representation over long periods of time. Therefore, the building and its interior furnishing reflect the needs of all the various periods of use and the various social groups concerned with them. As early as 1502, when the Wittenberg university was founded, seats for university purposes were installed. Epitaphs for professors and students soon followed. In 1604, Menz listed sixty-four monuments of this kind, often combinations of inscriptions and pictures, which were situated in the interior of the church.5 Many of these epitaphs had been painted in the workshop of Lucas Cranach the Younger. Besides the paintings, all sorts of liturgical equipment, one or two galleries, two pulpits, an organ and three or more seats or stalls completed the furnishing at the beginning of the sixteenth century. All the elements of the interior, with the exception of the baptistery, were affected by the changes that took place prior to 1600. In 1536, as has been said, a number of altars and a gallery were removed. These altars may have been part of chapels situated under the gallery that now were unused. In the same year, the small Corpus Christi Chapel south of the church, which had been secularised already in 1526, was rebuilt. From now on, the administration of the funds (Common Chest), founded in 1525, would use the former chapel for its meetings and to store things that were no longer being used. The seats in the church, which seem to have been the main medium of personal representation, are very enlightening when considering the transformations of the 1530s to the 1560s.6 The seats reflect the social hierarchy of the town, which was greatly influenced by the university, on the one hand, and the reformation of the Church, on the other. Unfortunately, the sixteenth-century seats have not been conserved. In the period from 1502 to 1528, there were the seats of the town council (which had been there at least since the early fifteenth century), some seats for the university, perhaps used only occasionally for the conferral of doctorates, and a pew or bench in the centre of the church for the pupils and their teachers. The 4 It seems that there was no extensive iconoclasm in Wittenberg in 1521/22, see Natalie Krentz, ‘Auf den Spuren der Erinnerung. Wie die “Wittenberger Bewegung” zu einem Ereignis wurde’, Zeitschrift für Historische Forschung 36/4 (2009) 565–95; Natalie Krentz, Ritualwandel und Deutungshoheit. Die frühe Reformation in der Residenzstadt Wittenberg (1500–1533) (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2014). 5 Balthasar Menz, Synthagma Epitaphorum (Magdeburg, 1604), especially 13–17. 6 For all quotations concerning the seats, see the records of the Common Chest, cf. n. 3.

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pupils had to sing during the services. In 1535, benches for women to use during the baptism ceremony are mentioned. In 1536, Bastian Moler (presumably Sebastian Adam), a painter working together with the Cranachs, also asked for a seat, which was moved from the former Franciscan church to the town one. Furthermore, in the same year, the booksellers and publishers Bartholomäus Vogel and Moritz Goltz, together with the printer Georg Rhau, committed to paying one Thaler every year for a splendidly decorated seat in which to stand in during the Sunday service. From around 1540, payments for the new construction and the repair of seats, as well as for permission to use released seats, are reported periodically. In the documents, the positions of the seats are defined in relation to the large and small pulpits, to the high altar, to the lectern, the baptistery, the organ, the galleries or the pillars or doors. The stall of the booksellers and publishers was situated near the lectern. Even more interesting are the descriptions of positions in relation to the seats of important persons – notables such as ‘Lucas Cranachin’, i. e. the wife of Cranach the Younger, mentioned in 1561; or the wife of Christian Beyer (1566); or ‘Herr Samuel Selfisch’ (1568), who was also a very important publisher and bookseller; or the printer Konrad Rühel (1571). The rise of booksellers is clearly visible in the order of the church seats. Very frequently – in 1567, 1569, 1570 and 1576 – the seat of Lucas Cranach the Younger is mentioned; he was the most notable, central personality in the Wittenberg township. The records of the town and the church prove that the booksellers had an important influence on the refurnishing of the church interior and on town policy as a whole. From 1536, the year of the first campaign of dismantling altars, to 1547, we find one, often two printers, bookbinders or sellers among the six masters of the church funds – for example, in 1536 Georg Rhau and Andreas Bernutz (book binder), and Georg Rhau also in 1546 and 1547. After this, for more than ten years, there is no book trader to be found among the members of the administration of funds, but by then most of the refurnishing work had been completed. From 1557, the second generation (Hans Cantzler) follows. The town council presents a similar trend: from the 1540s, the booksellers are permanently represented. We find Georg Rhau in the records from 1544, Hans Lufft from 1542, along with Moritz Goltz, Bartholomäus Vogel, Christoph Schramm and Hans Cantzler. Cranach the Younger was never one of the funds administrators but was a town councillor from 1549 to 1566. His father had held this office from 1519 to 1544. The creative business people, the book traders, both Cranachs and the sculptor Claus Heffner, the painter Steffan Schmelzer and the goldsmith Christian Döring dominated town policy at the latest from the 1520s and, hence, the remodelling of

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the church interior. At times, for example in 1560, they privately invested large amounts in projects such as the silberne kandel, a splendid sacramental mug, or, from 1569 to 1571, the extension of the church building. The remodelling of the interior of the church reached its height in 1547/8 when the new altar was designed and painted. Contrary to some older researchers, we are of the opinion that the entire work was produced then – in conjunction with the Schmalkaldic War.

The new altarpiece Who paid for the new altarpiece, and who is portrayed in the central picture? The picture at the base shows Martin Luther preaching. His left hand is on the Bible (perhaps the New Testament since it is a slim volume), with his right hand he is pointing to the central crucifix. The crucifix stands out starkly between the preacher and the congregation, thus Luther is obviously preaching on the sacrificial death of Jesus Christ. The congregation is listening to him; some people are looking out of the picture towards the viewer (fig. 47).7 The central picture shows the Last Supper. Together with Jesus, the disciples John, Peter and Judas, Luther is sitting at the round stone table, as are other persons who seem to be coevals. The cupbearer might be the younger Cranach, but even this identification is notional because we have only one reliable portrait of him, and it was painted twenty years later. In this picture his hair is dark. The role is fitting since Cranach distributed the wine in the church for a long period. In the background, a beautiful Saxon landscape with a castle on a rock, a river and a town is visible. The tree of life and the solid fortress of faith may be symbolised. The sky is cloudy, the light warm and soft. The left wing shows a baptism ceremony. Philip Melanchthon is baptising a little child; Cranach the Elder is assisting him. The right wing shows Johannes Bugenhagen, sitting in a chair with a high back. Holding the keys like Peter, he is granting absolution to a penitent sinner while refusing it to a nobleman with a short sword. Like the baptism, the scene is situated in an idealised church interior. Confession is presented as a precondition of the sacrament, but the painting also alludes to Bugenhagen’s role as the author of church orders. These included the discipline of the anathema, which is what we can see.

7 Concerning the programme of the altarpiece, Joseph L. Körner, The Reformation of the Image (London: Reaktion Books, 2004) is still essential.

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The reverse side of the base panel presents the damned and the blessed (fig. 48); above them, we can observe Christ resurrected conquering death and the devil. On the reverse side of the baptism, Moses is shown with a bronze serpent as an instrument of healing. Melanchthon, the central figure on the front, took the bronze serpent for his coat of arms. On the left, another scene from the Old Testament, the sacrifice of Isaac, is shown. This is appropriate, with Bugenhagen and a subtheme of obedience on the front of this wing. Both scenes from the Old Testament are anticipations of the sacrificial death of Christ. Thus the Sola fide is the central message of the complete pictorial programme, which is a single piece. There are close relationships in form and content among the eight pictures: on the compositional level (scenes situated in landscapes, in interior rooms and in rooms in differing timeframes: the loggia of the Last Supper), on the time level (antiquity, present, eternity), and so on. These different levels of impact are linked by the main characters, Luther and his followers, and particularly by the cupbearer, who is both part of the central picture and part of the congregation in front of the altarpiece. In the background of the Last Supper, moreover, the sky seems to fuse with the eternal light of the resurrection scene on the rear. We recognise fathers and sons – Abraham and Isaac, God the Father and Jesus Christ (the hand of God the Father is shown in the resurrection scene), Cranach the Elder and the Younger, Melanchthon and a little child. Hence biblical history is connected with the present time of the congregation in front of the altar. The contemporary community becomes part of eternity. One should also recall the eye contact between the people in the pictures and the viewers. It is a programme of religious self-ascertainment, which makes sense especially at the time of Martin Luther’s death in 1546, of the Schmalkaldic War, which started a little later, and quarrels in the Protestant party, which had been in fact a problem throughout the years from the 1520s. For these reasons, I believe that the entire altarpiece came into being in 1547/8. Actually, in 1547/8, Lucas Cranach the Younger received 51 florins from the church funds for the panel, a small sum compared to the Schneeberg Altarpiece, for which nearly 360 florins were paid to his father, or the Kemberg Altarpiece, for which about 155 florins were paid. The explanation for this may be that in 1550 the town council and Cranach the Elder came to a mutual agreement and discharged debts that Cranach had towards the council and vice versa. The town council owed Cranach the Elder about 377 florins, and around 310 florins after the agreement. Presumably the council and the artist intended to charge off the costs for the altarpiece allocating taxes Cranach had to pay annually. The reason for the agreement of 1550 may have been

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Cranach’s decision to leave Wittenberg and to turn responsibility for the workshop over to his son. Another question is the identity of the persons who are portrayed in the pictures, especially in the central scene on the front.8 If they are the initiators (or donors?) of the new central work in the church, we must first think of the booksellers who made an enormous profit from the Reformation. As we know, these people formed the town council, which, in my opinion, commissioned the altarpiece. Be that as it may, we encounter the same people. We do not know the portraits of all the councillors who could be considered. However, I think within some limits we may identify Hans Lufft (fig. 49), Georg Rhau (fig. 50) and Bartholomäus Vogel (fig. 51). Moreover, the epitaph for Vogel was painted by the Cranach workshop, as was the small round portrait of Georg Rhau, a woodcut from the Cranach workshop. Judas remains to be considered. It may be the figure of Kaspar von Schwenckfeld (fig. 52), who fought strongly from the 1520s against Luther’s concept of communion, or rather, he argued against the rite of communion and referred to Judas who had taken part in the Last Supper but had not been spared damnation. In December 1545, the Wittenberg theologians answered some questions Duke John Frederick had asked them; they argued in favour of keeping the Schmalkaldic League together and of fighting against such exponents of heresy as Schwenckfeld. If the booksellers represented themselves inside the church sitting in richly decorated seats near the lectern, and indeed in the central picture of the new altarpiece at the table of Jesus Christ, they seemed to be certain that the spread of Lutheran doctrines had been of central importance for the success of the Reformation. Therefore, they felt like disciples of Christ who were following his instruction to teach and baptise. On the sarcophagus in the central picture on the back of the altarpiece, we find the following inscription: Mir ist gegeben alle gewalt im himel und erden. Darumb gehet hin und leret alle völcker und taiffet sie im namen des vaters und des sons und des heiligen geistes und leret sie halten alles was ich euch bevolhen habe. Und sihe ich bin bei euch alle tage bis an der welt ende. Matthei. XXVIII.9 8 See Insa C. Hennen, ‘Der Wittenberger Reformationsaltar im Kontext der Umgestaltung der Stadtpfarrkirche zwischen 1520 und 1580’, in Werner, Elke A./Eusterschulte, Anne/Heydenreich, Gunnar (ed.), Lucas Cranach der Jüngere und die Reformation der Bilder (München: Hirmer, 2015) 62–71. 9 ‘All power is given unto me in heaven and in earth. Go ye therefore, and teach all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost: Teaching them to observe all things whatsoever I have commanded you: and, lo, I am with you always, even unto the end of the world’ (King James’ Bible, Matt 28:18–20).

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The presumed initiators or donators of the altarpiece profess their faith before the congregation. The action in the pictures accords with the actions in front of the altar. This function of the altar, which is no longer a piece of intercession but an instruction for present life, follows a new Protestant concept, perhaps invented by Lucas Cranach the Younger. Peter Poscharsky10 observed the same function in the case of the Weimar altarpiece. The narrative in the pictures defines what occurs in front of the altarpiece and affects the entire interior of the church building, that is, the lively faith of the Lutheran community. The altarpiece shows the central sacraments and gives clear instruction to the Lutheran community that meets in the church for the service. All the parts of the liturgy are related to the altarpiece and are thereby certified by the events shown there. The central Protestant achievement of the Augsburg Diet of 1530 had been the communion under both species. Emperor Charles V, the winner of the Schmalkaldic War, guaranteed this to the Wittenberg negotiators – Bugenhagen and Melanchthon and the councillors – when the town capitulated on 19 May 1547. The altarpiece, which had been designed during the profound crisis of 1547, brings this into focus: the essential Lutheran achievements are trusted. To this day, during the Sunday service, the communicants receive the bread in front of the altar on the left side where Jesus is feeding Judas. They then gather around the communion table in order to receive the wine on the right side where Luther and the cup bearer are to be seen. When they are on the reverse side of the altar screen, they look at the central point of their faith: the resurrection and life in eternity.

Bibliography Hennen, Insa C., ‘Der Wittenberger Reformationsaltar im Kontext der Umgestaltung der Stadtpfarrkirche zwischen 1520 und 1580’, in Werner, Elke A./Eusterschulte, Anne/ Heydenreich, Gunnar (ed.), Lucas Cranach der Jüngere und die Reformation der Bilder (München: Hirmer, 2015) 62–71. Hennen, Insa C., ‘Die Ausstattung der Wittenberger Stadtpfarrkirche und der Cranach’sche Reformationsaltar’, in Lück, Heiner/Bünz, Enno/Helten, Leonhard et al. (ed.), Das ernestinische Wittenberg: Spuren Cranachs in Schloss und Stadt (Petersberg: Michael Imhof Verlag, 2015) 401–22. Karlstadt, Andreas, Ain lobliche ordnung der Fürstlichen stat Wittemberg (Speyer: Johann Eckhart, 1522). Karlstadt, Andreas, Von abtuhung der Bylder (Wittenberg, 1522). 10 Peter Poscharsky, ‘Die Einbindung des Altars in Zeit und Raum’, in Bomski, Franziska/ Seemann, Hellmut T./Valk, Thorsten (ed.), Bild und Bekenntnis. Die Cranach-Werkstatt in Weimar (Gottingen: Wallstein Verlag, 2015).

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Körner, Joseph L., The Reformation of the Image (London: Reaktion Books, 2004). Krentz, Natalie, ‘Auf den Spuren der Erinnerung. Wie die “Wittenberger Bewegung” zu einem Ereignis wurde’, Zeitschrift für Historische Forschung 36/4 (2009) 565–95. Krentz, Natalie, Ritualwandel und Deutungshoheit. Die frühe Reformation in der Residenzstadt Wittenberg (1500–1533) (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2014). Menz, Balthasar, Synthagma Epitaphorum (Magdeburg, 1604). Poscharsky, Peter, ‘Die Einbindung des Altars in Zeit und Raum’, in Bomski, Franziska/ Seemann, Hellmut T./Valk, Thorsten (ed.), Bild und Bekenntnis. Die Cranach-Werkstatt in Weimar (Gottingen: Wallstein Verlag, 2015).

Aurelia Zdun´czyk

Die Bedeutung der Bildnisse der sogenannten Wittenberger Gruppe für die Legitimierung und Institutionalisierung des Augsburger Bekenntnisses1

Seine Reflexion über Martin Luthers (1483–1546) Verständnis vom Begriff der Kirche führte August Ludwig Gottlob Krehl zur Überlegung: „Ist die Kirche nichts Anderes, als die von Christus eingesetzte Verbindung zum rechten Gebrauche des Evangeliums für den Zweck der Heiligung, also eine Institution, nicht aber eine Doctrin oder Wissenschaft: so ist ihr ein Kirchenregiment und eine Kirchenordnung nöthig. Beides leugnet Luther an einigen Stellen“.2 Nach Johannes Burkhardt war die Institutionenbildung das Kernstück der frühneuzeitlichen Geschichte der Konfessionen. Im Prozess der Herausbildung der Konfessionen schöpften die daran beteiligten Eliten (und mit zeitlicher Verzögerung auch die Institutionen) das Potenzial des neuen Mediums Buchdruck, das nicht nur Texte, sondern auch Bilder verbreitete, meisterhaft aus.3 Bilder waren nicht nur Kampfwerkzeuge im ideologischen Streit der Konfessionen, sondern sie erfüllten auch didaktische Funktionen, indem sie etwa den Reformationsgedanken im Bild auslegten oder in Form von Konfessionsbildern die erwünschte Art der Abhaltung der Gottesdienste darstellten.4 Die Analyse der Darstellungsform und vor allem der Entstehungszeit des Motivs der sogenannten Wittenberger Gruppe (das nicht nur Kirchengemälde zierte, sondern auch im

1 Eine tragende Rolle für diesen Aufsatz spielt der Beitrag von Hans Peter Hasse Luther und seine Wittenberger Freunde. Zum Erscheinungsbild einer Gruppe in der Kunst und Publizistik des 16. Jahrhunderts. Auch wenn Schriftquellen den Schwerpunkt seiner Erwägungen bilden, schöpfe ich aus Hasses kunstwerkbezogenen Überlegungen das gedankliche Rüstzeug und wertvolle Formulierungen für meine Betrachtungen zur Rolle der Präsenz der Gruppenbildnisse in Werken bildender Künste. Von besonderer Bedeutung scheint mir seine abschließende Anregung: „Es wäre an der Zeit, dieses Motiv einmal fundiert aus kirchengeschichtlicher und kunstgeschichtlicher Sicht zu untersuchen“, vgl. Hasse, Luther und seine Wittenberger Freunde, 119. 2 Vgl. Krehl, Ueber Luthers Begriff von der Kirche, 55. 3 Vgl. Burkhardt, Stulecie reformacji w Niemczech, 138f.; Burkhardt, Das Reformationsjahrhundert, 56f. 4 Vgl. u. a. Brückner, Lutherische Bekenntnisgemälde; Marsch, Bilder zur Augsburger Konfession; Andersson, Religiöse Bilder Cranachs.

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Druck erschien) lässt meiner Ansicht nach darauf schließen,5 dass diese einmalige Art der Darstellung der Gruppe von Luthers Wegbegleitern sowohl der Legitimierung als auch der Institutionalisierung der Konfession diente. Die Person Luthers war für die Ausformung der reformatorischen Identität von außerordentlicher Bedeutung: Bereits zu seinen Lebzeiten wurde an seinem Image gearbeitet, wie Martin Warnke formulierte.6 Die Druckschriften aus den Jahren 1519–25 verbreiteten sein Bildnis und seine Lehre als die der zentralen Persönlichkeit der Reformation; bis auf Philipp Melanchthon (1497–1560) blieben seine anderen Wegbegleiter und Freunde jedoch weitgehend unbekannt.7 Wie Hans Peter Hasse zu Recht bemerkt, wird auf dem Bild Cranachs des Älteren Kurfürst Johann Friedrich I. von Sachsen (1503–54) zwar von Reformatoren begleitet, leicht zu erkennen sind aber nur die Gesichter Luthers und Melanchthons (fig. 53). Die Sicht auf andere Vertreter dieser Gruppe ist fast vollständig von den Figuren im Vordergrund versperrt, daher sind sie besonders schwer zu identifizieren. Wie Hasse betont, spiegelt die Bildkomposition deutlich den damaligen Trend wider – die Gruppe von Luthers Gefährten stand zu dieser Zeit noch völlig im Hintergrund.8 Und diese konfessionsbildende Elite, wie sie Burkhardt bezeichnet, unterstützte ja mit ihren Kompetenzen den „Vater der Reformation“ mit unermüdlichem Engagement, bereits von Anfang an! Ihre Mitglieder wirkten als ideologische Förderer, sie übernahmen didaktische Aufgaben, entwickelten und erweiterten die regionalen Strukturen des Luthertums mit Wittenberg als Hauptzentrum an der Spitze.9 Diese Rolle findet ihren Niederschlag in der Kirchenordnung Sachsens von 1539, die u. a. von Justus Jonas (1493–1555) und Caspar Cruciger (1504–48) abgefasst wurde; das Titelblatt schmücken nicht nur Initialen, sondern auch Motive, die u. a. in den Siegeln Jonas’, Crucigers, Johannes Bugenhagens (1485–1558), Melanchthons und Luthers selbst auftauchen.10

5 6 7 8

Vgl. Hasse, Luther und seine Wittenberger Freunde, 87–90. Vgl. Warnke, Cranachs Luther. Vgl. Hasse, Luther und seine Wittenberger Freunde, 89f. Hasse, Luther und seine Wittenberger Freunde, 90, Anm. 11. Lucas Cranach d. J. Kurfürst Johann Friedrich der Großmütige und die Wittenberger Reformatoren, um 1538, Toledo Museum of Art, Inv. Nr. 1926.55. Im Unterschied zu H. P. Hasse meinen andere Forscher, dass das Bild von Cranach d. J. gemalt wurde, vgl. Trümper, Kurfürst Johann Friedrich der Großmütige, Kat. Nr. 104, S. 288 mit Abb. S. 289. 9 Burkhardt, Stulecie reformacji w Niemczech, 152–61; Burkhardt, Das Reformationsjahrhundert, 86ff. 10 Vgl. Schulze, Lucas Cranach d.J., 208. Auch Hasse betont, dass wir diese Grafik im Kontext des „Erscheinungsbildes der Wittenberger Reformatoren“ zu betrachten haben (der Forscher bezieht sich auf das Titelblatt der Predigt Luthers aus dem Jahre 1533, das derselbe Holzschnitt ziert). Vgl. Hasse, Luther und seine Wittenberger Freunde, 85ff, Abb. 1.

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In Anknüpfung an Hans-Peter Hasses Überlegungen drängt sich die Frage auf, wie es einzuordnen ist, dass das Bildmotiv der Wittenberger Gruppe erst nach Luthers Tod deutliche Formen annahm, als sich das „Selbstverständnis der Religionsparteien“, eben gerade auch des Lagers der Anhänger der Confessio Augustana, „als «Gruppe» verstärkte“.11 Der Tod ihres Initiators fiel in eine für die Reformation schwierige Zeit. Bekanntlich verlor der Schmalkaldische Bund am 24. April 1547 die Schlacht bei Mühlberg, woraufhin sich die Besiegten einer grundlegenden Frage stellen mussten: Wie soll sich das Werk Gottes behaupten, wenn jener nicht mehr da ist, „durch wel=//chen unsern lieben vater Christus sein Evan//gelium verteidiget hat/ wider den leidigen Bapst// und macherley Rotten/ und Tyrannen/ Ja // wider alle pforten der Hellen“, wie Bugenhagen in der Leichenpredigt nach Luthers Tod sagte.12 Die Hoffnung auf eine Durchsetzung der Confessio begann man nämlich in der Hervorhebung der Rolle der Gemeinschaft zu erkennen; daher erschien es notwendig, die Idee des reformatorischen Kollektivs – der Gruppe von Luthers Freunden und Weggefährten – zu stärken. Die Konfessionspolemik fing damals an, dieses einschlägige Motiv zu verwenden,13 um durch meiner Meinung nach bewusst konstruierte Ideenprogramme das Bildnis der „Gruppe“ für die Institutionalisierung und Legitimierung der sich herausbildenden Konfession zu nutzen. Auf dem Holzschnitt „Lutherus triumphans“ aus dem Jahre 1568 erscheint die „Wittenberger Gruppe“, in der wir in der ersten Reihe Philipp Melanchthon, Caspar Cruciger, Johannes Bugenhagen sowie Justus Jonas und in der zweiten Jan Hus (um 1370–1415) und Johann Förster (1496 (95?)–1556) erkennen, als unerschütterliches Bollwerk, das sich der auf der anderen Bildseite dargestellten Gruppe von Jesuiten, Dominikanern und Klerikern entgegenstellt (fig. 54).14 Die Wittenberger nehmen am Kampf teil, und ihr Werkzeug sind die Schreibfedern und Bücher in ihren Händen. Auffallend ist die Einheit ihrer Gruppe, die nach Hasse einen Kontrast bildet zur zersplitterten Gruppe, die die römische Kirche vertritt.15 Obschon sich eine gewisse Gruppenidentität der Wittenberger Theologen schon recht früh herausgebildet hatte, war die Gruppe nicht monolithisch oder in sich geschlossen. Vielmehr sehen wir in den Bildern Cranachs des Jüngeren die Zusammensetzung, die sich zu seiner Zeit herauskristallisiert hatte.16 Zur Gruppe gehörten vor allem Melanchthon, Bugenhagen, Jonas, Cruciger, aber auch Paul 11 12 13 14 15 16

Vgl. Hasses Erwägungen diesbezüglich: Hasse, Luther und seine Wittenberger Freunde, 87–90. Bugenhagen, Christliche pre||digt, fol. 2v–3r. Hasse, Luther und seine Wittenberger Freunde, 90. Pötzschke, Wider Papst und Kaiser, S. 89 mit Abb. 43 S. 88. Hasse, Luther und seine Wittenberger Freunde, 91ff, Abb. 4. Vgl. Hasse, Luther und seine Wittenberger Freunde, 93 und 118. Leder, Luthers Beziehungen zu seinen Wittenberger Freunden, 419.

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Eber (1511–69), Johann Förster, Georg Rörer (1492–1557)17 und Nikolaus von Amsdorf (1483–1565), der nach 1548 begann, auch kritisch gegen einige Wittenberger Reformatoren aufzutreten und daher von Cranach dem Jüngeren ignoriert wird.18 Manchmal erfuhren die Reformatoren auch Unterstützung durch Vertreter der kirchlichen Obrigkeit, die lokalen Gemeinden Augsburger Bekenntnisses vorstanden. Ein Beispiel finden wir auf einem Flügel des Altars aus Kemberg mit der Szene der Taufe Jesu (fig. 55).19 Zwischen Melanchthon und Bugenhagen wird der 1551 verstorbene Bartholomäus Bernhardi (1487–1551),20 ein Freund Luthers und Propst aus Kemberg, gezeigt, und hinter ihm Matthias Wanckel (1511–71),21 sein Schwiegersohn und Nachfolger, der zur Entstehungszeit des Altars das Propstamt innehatte,22 mit seinem jüngeren Bruder auf der rechten Seite.23 Dem Blick der in der Kirche versammelten Gemeinde präsentierten sich die Pröpste im Kreis der engsten Gefährten der Reformationsführer,24 mehr noch – als Zeugen des Werkes Jesu. Karl Nolte schrieb, dass in dieser Tafel „das Heilsgeschehen 17 Leder, Luthers Beziehungen zu seinen Wittenberger Freunden, 419, 438f. 18 Hasse, Luther und seine Wittenberger Freunde, 94. 19 Infolge eines Unglücksfalls von 1994 sind von dem schönen gemalten Altaraufsatz, der 1565 von Lucas Cranach dem Jüngeren geschaffen wurde, nur Teile erhalten (Flügel mit den Szenen der Taufe Jesu, der Erbsünde und der Sintflut sowie kleine Tafelfragmente mit Darstellungen der Kreuzigung und der Auferstehung, Teile der Predella mit der Szene des Letzten Abendmahls und des kunstvollen Schnitzrahmens), vgl. Seyderhelm, Katalog zur Ausstellung, 8f. 20 Bartholomäus Bernhardi besuchte zusammen mit Luther die Lateinschule in Eisenach, anschließend nahm er das Studium in Erfurt und Wittenberg auf. Luthers Partei ergriff er bereits im Ablaßstreit. Von 1518 bis zu seinem Tod im Jahre 1551 war er Propst in Kemberg. Er gilt als der erste verheiratete evangelische Pfarrer (Pfarrerbuch der Kirchenprovinz Sachsen, Bd. 1, 314f.). Seine Vermählung mit Gertraud Pannier am 24. 08. 1521 bildete den Hintergrund seines Konflikts mit dem Erzbischof von Magdeburg, Kurfürst Albrecht von Mainz. Nach Wagenmann ist Bernhardi vermutlich selbst der Verfasser seiner Verteidigungsschrift Apologia pro M. Bartholomaeo praeposito, qui uxorem in sacerdotio duxit, die von Melanchthon bearbeitet wurde und in deutscher wie in lateinischer Sprache in den Jahren 1521 und 1522 in Erfurt und Wittenberg mehrmals veröffentlicht sowie in Luthers und Melanchthon Schriften abgedruckt wurde, vgl. Wagenmann, Bernhardi, 459f. 21 Matthias Wanckel heiratete Katharina Bernhardi im Jahre 1540, das Propstamt hatte er bis zu seinem Tod im Jahre 1571 inne. Er war mit Jonas befreundet (Pfarrerbuch der Kirchenprovinz Sachsen, Bd. 9, 237f). Er beteiligte sich aktiv an Schul- und Kirchenvisitationen; 1545 nahm er im Auftrag von Fürst Georg von Anhalt zusammen mit Luther, Melanchthon, Bugenhagen, Jonas und anderen Reformatoren an den in der Dompropstei zu Merseburg geführten Beratungen teil. Während seiner Amtszeit wurde die ehemalige Kemberger Propstei in eine Superintendentur umgewandelt. Vgl. Pröhle, Wanckel, 137f. 22 Einige sind der Meinung, dass Wanckel Auftraggeber des Altaraufsatzes sei, vgl. Reichardt, Luther im Kirchenkreise Kemberg, 7; Thulin, Cranach-Alta¨re, 111; Seyderhelm, Katalog zur Ausstellung, 8. 23 Nolte, Die Kirche zu Kemberg und ihr Cranachaltar, 90. 24 Auch Reichardts Meinung nach finden wir am Flügel des Kemberger Altaraufsatzes die bildhafte Bestätigung dafür, dass Wanckel in „ständiger Verbindung mit den Männern der Reformation“ stand. Reichardt, Luther im Kirchenkreise Kemberg, 6f.

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durch die Gestalten der Zeitgenossen zur gegenwärtigen Geschichte gemacht ist“.25 Meiner Auffassung nach sind derartige Darstellungen aber nicht ausschließlich aus der Perspektive ihrer aktualisierenden Aspekte zu betrachten. Wichtig ist meiner Meinung nach das Zurückgreifen auf die Anfänge der Kirche. Luther sagt: „Die Sünde wird gefesselt durch die Taufe, und das Reich Gottes wird aufgerichtet“.26 Der Reformator betont an mehreren Stellen, dass die Anführer der Reformation Nachfolger der Apostel sind, denen Christus seine Kirche in Obhut gab und die er mit der Mission betraute, das Evangelium zu verkünden.27 Hier gehen sie aber in ihrer Rolle als Glaubenszeugen gewissermaßen auch den ersten Jüngern voran, denn zum Zeitpunkt der Taufe Jesu war noch kein Apostel berufen worden. In diesem Zusammenhang erscheint Johannes der Täufer von besonderer Bedeutung: Für Luther war er das Beispiel des ersten Predigers, dessen Funktion, auf Christus zu verweisen, alle zur Verkündigung des Gotteswortes Berufenen übernehmen sollten.28 Krehl schreibt in Anknüpfung an die Worte des Paulus aus dem Römerbrief (Röm 10, 13–14,17): „So kommt der Glaube aus der Predigt, das Predigen aber durch das Wort (Befehl) Gottes! […] Gott sandte Christum, zu predigen; das Wort wurde Fleisch, und aus dem Schauen der Herrlichkeit des Eingebornen vom Vater, aus dem Hören seines Wortes entsprang der Glaube der Apostel. Diese sandte Christus aus, und aus ihrer Predigt kam der Glaube der Berufenen und ihre Gemeinschaft, das Bekenntniss Christi in der Welt“.29 Der Glaube der Reformatoren baute darauf, Zeugen Jesu zu sein; er entströmte der Beherzigung der Worte Jesu und der Schau seiner Herrlichkeit. Die Reformatoren sahen den Ruhm des einziggeborenen Sohn Gottes in Form der durch ihn vollbrachten Wunder, beispielsweise in der Szene der Auferweckung des Lazarus, die am Epitaph für den Bürgermeister von Nordhausen Michael

25 26 27 28

Nolte, Die Kirche zu Kemberg und ihr Cranachaltar, 90. http://www.bk-luebeck.eu/zitate-luther.html (letzter Zugriff 20. 08. 2014). Vgl. Boettcher, Von der Trägheit der Memoria, 62. Luthers Haltung zu Johannes dem Täufer wird von Weimer in seinem Buch Luther, Cranach und die Bilder. Gesetz und Evangelium – Schlüssel zum reformatorischen Bildgebrauch gründlich analysiert. Wie Weimer schreibt, erwählte Luther sich als Urbild eines evangelischen Predigers Johannes den Täufer, der, auf Jesus weisend, in Wort und Gestus das Evangelium bezeugt und verkündet. Die Verkündigung des Evangeliums ist die Aufgabe des Predigers, hinter der die Person des Predigers zurücktritt. Weimer, Luther, Cranach, 124f. Ebenso bleibt die Person des Johannes völlig hinter seiner Mission als dessen, der mit seinem Wort, Zeugnis und Finger „auf den Messias weist“, verborgen. Weimer, Luther, Cranach, 118f. Vgl. auch die hier bedeutsame Evangeliumsstelle: „Es war ein Mensch von Gott gesand, der hies Johannes. Derselbige kam zum zeugnis, das er von dem Liecht zeugete, auff das sie alle durch in gleubten. Er war nicht das Liecht, sondern das er zeugete von dem Liecht“ (John 1:6– 8). Zitat aus: Luther Bibel 1545. 29 Krehl, Ueber Luthers Begriff von der Kirche, 35.

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Meyenburg (um 1491–1555) dargestellt wird (fig. 56).30 Die Reformatoren erscheinen hier als Begleiter Jesu schon zu Beginn der Erfüllung des Erlösungsplans Gottes, wodurch bekräftigt wird, dass die evangelische Kirche des Augsburger Bekenntnisses die alte Lehre, der alte Glauben, die alte Kirche ist. Wie Burkhardt betont, setzt schon der Begriff Reformation selbst eine Restitution und keine Gründung einer neuen Kirche voraus! Genau wie Erasmus wollte auch Luther „das Alte instandsetzen, nicht Neues hervorbringen“.31 „«Neu» diente vielmehr allen als Scheltwort dafür, was der Gegner tat“:32 Luther zitiert den Vorwurf der „Papisten“: „seid von uns gefallen und eine newe kirche worden wider uns“, um ihn sogleich zurückzugeben und zu betonen, „das wir die rechte alte kirche sind, 30 Meyenburg war Bürgermeister seit ca. 1540 bis zu seinem Tod. Kawerau schreibt: In „diesen Aemtern vertrat er seine Stadt auf Reichstagen (Worms 1535, Regensburg 1541, Speier 1542), Städtetagen und Kreistagen, bemühte sich auch in den schweren Zeiten des Interims durch ziemlich dunkle und zweideutige ausweichende Erklärungen an den Kaiser, dessen gewaltsames Eingreifen zu verhüten, ohne doch den evangelischen Charakter der Stadt preiszugeben“ (zitat aus: Kawerau, Meienburg, 286ff). Meyenburg stand mit den Reformatoren, insbesondere mit Jonas und Melanchthon, mit denen er befreundet war, in engem Kontakt. Er stand dem Praeceptor Germaniae treu zur Seite, auch als die theologische Auseinandersetzung entflammte. „Der Meyenburger hieng ganz und gar ex crepitu Philipp“ – so Ratzenberger. (Zitat aus: Kawerau, Meienburg, 286ff). Melanchthon wird auf Meyenburgs Epitaph hervorgehoben durch die ausdrucksvolle Geste Luthers, der seinen Arm an die Schulter seines Mitstreiters lehnt. Nach Schulze und Hasse könnte diese Geste die Freundschaft, die der Vater der Reformation Melanchthon entgegenbrachte, widerspiegeln; im Kontext der theologischen Auseinandersetzung können wir sie jedoch auch als visuellen Versuch betrachten, bildhaft das tiefe Vertrauen darzustellen, das Luther dem Praeceptor Germaniae erwies, den er ja nicht nur als seinen Freund, sondern auch als engsten Mitstreiter erachtete. Vgl. Schulze, Lucas Cranach d. J., 136; Hasse, Luther und seine Wittenberger Freunde, 98. Susan R. Boettcher schreibt, dass „die Reformatoren die Erweckung des Lazarus durch Christus (…) als anwesende Jünger beobachten“, vgl. Boettcher, Von der Trägheit der Memoria, 62. Verwundern kann das im Bildnis der Reformatorengruppe enthaltene Porträt von Erasmus von Rotterdam, ist doch die Uneinigkeit zwischen ihm und Luther in der Frage der Willensfreiheit allgemein bekannt. Bereits im Jahre 1517 schrieb Luther an Johann Lang: „An Erasmus verliere ich täglich mehr die Freude …, das Menschliche hat bei ihm größeres Gewicht als das Göttliche … Man urteilt anders, wenn man so manches dem Vermögen des Menschen zutraut, als wenn man nichts weiß außer der Gnade“ (Luthers Briefe, 51ff, Zitat in deutscher Übersetzung aus: Hägglund, Die Frage der Willensfreiheit, 181f, dort auch eine detaillierte Besprechung dieser Frage). Erasmus’ Präsenz in der Wittenberger Gruppe kann auf zweierlei Art ausgelegt werden. Als das Epitaph entstand (1558), wurde Erasmus bereits „als Mitarbeiter der Reformatoren“ vorgestellt (vgl. Hasse, Luther und seine Wittenberger Freunde, 108, Anm. 61), außerdem – so Schulze – bestätigte seine Anwesenheit an Meyenburgs Epitaph, dass der Verstorbene der humanistischen Begeisterung aus der Zeit des Studiums in Erfurt, das damals „eine Hochburg des Humanismus in Deutschland“ war, lebenslänglich treu geblieben sei, vgl. Schultze, Lucas Cranach d. J., 138. 31 Vgl. Burkhardt, Das Reformationsjahrhundert, 16, Anm. 1 (S. 206): „«Nos vetera instauramus nova non prodimus». Vgl. dazu Theo Stammen, Studien zum politischen Denken des Humanismus, Neuried 1999, s. 86“. 32 Burkhardt, Stulecie reformacji w Niemczech, 24. Burkhardt, Das Reformationsjahrhundert, 16 und 79.

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Ihr aber von vns, das ist, von der alten kirchen abtrunig worden, ein newe kirchen angericht habt wider die alte kirche“.33 Die Papstkirche wurde als „neue[r] Gott, Glauben und Lehr“ abgelehnt;34 die Reformation dagegen als das Werk Gottes legitimiert. Als Begründung galt ihr Fortbestehen jeglichen Hindernissen und Verfolgungen zum Trotz, eine Gewissheit, die von Reformatoren mehrfach geäußert wurde. Im Jahre 1546 schrieb Bugenhagen in seinem Brief an die Pfarrer und Prediger: „So wollen sich doch frome leute solch en falschen schein in irem gebet nicht irren lassen/ sondern dieses mit ernst fur und fur bitten/ das Gott seine Lere/ und rechte Gottes dienst schützen und erhalten wolle. Denn der Papst hat zu diesem Krieg gros gelt und volck gesand/ daraus klar ist/ das die Feinde furnemlich Christliche Lere zu vertilgen/ und die Herrschaft und Stedte / darin rechte Lere geprediget/ zu verwusten furhaben“.35 Und an anderer Stelle: „Es wird auch Gott selb in diesen grossen sache Richter sein/ Und ob wir gleich auch etwas leiden müssen/ so wird dennoch Gott unser angst/ und unser straff lindern/ und uns bald erretten/ aber die Abgöttischen feinde/ wird er in diesem leben und hernach ewiglich straffen. (…) Er wolle in dieser Kirchen/ die seine Lere recht prediget/ höret und liebet/ gewisslich seine wohnung haben/ und sie nicht lassen vertilgen/ wie er spricht Johannis xiiij. Wer mich liebet/ der wird meine rede bewaren/ und mein Vater wird in lieben/ und wir werden zu jm komen/ und wohnung bey im machen (…)“.36 Als graphischen Ausdruck dieses Gedankens können wir den Holzschnitt von Lucas Cranach dem Jüngeren aus dem Jahre 1547 bezeichnen, der die Imago Somnii Philipp. Melanchthon, den „Traum Melanchthons” darstellt (fig. 57).37 Uns interessieren die Zeilen 33–8 des offenbar von Melanchthon selbst verfassten Gedichts, das die rechte Seite des Holzschnitts einnimmt: „Doctrinaeq[ue] tuae studium, paruamq[ue] Sareptam.// Doctrinae hospitium protege quaeso, tuae“.38 An die Bitte um Schutz für den Hort von Gottes Lehre knüpft sich einige Zeilen später die von Gottes Stimme selbst ausgesprochene Zusicherung: „Nemo meis manibus coetum mea dicta colentem,// Sic inquit tua vox, eripuisse potest“ („So spricht Deine Stimme: »Niemand kann meinen Händen die Gemeinde, die meine

33 Wider Hans Worst (1541), Luthers Werke WA 51, S. 478f. Vgl. auch S. 481, 24–34. Vgl. Burkhardt, Stulecie reformacji w Niemczech, 24. Burkhardt, Das Reformationsjahrhundert, 16. 34 So formulierte es der unter dem Namen Judas Nazarei schreibende Autor, vgl. Burkhardt, Alt und Neu, 155; Nazarei, Vom alten und neuen Gott, passim; Burkardt, Stulecie reformacji w Niemczech, 24; Burkhardt, Das Reformationsjahrhundert, 16; Wider Hans Worst (1541), Luthers Werke WA 51, 469–572. 35 Zitat aus: Bugenhagen, Ein Schrifft, fol. 3v. 36 Ebd., fol. 6v. 37 Melanchthons Traum, 353x266, Vgl. Lucas Cranach d. Ä., 668. 38 „Die Bildungsstätte Deiner Lehre, das kleine Sarepta, wo Deine Lehre ein Zuhause hat, schütze es, ich bitte Dich“ (eigene Übersetzung).

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Worte hochhält, entreißen«“).39 Luther betont gleichwohl: „Gott sorget, wir aber sollen arbeitten“.40 In den Tischreden lehrt er: „Wenn ich in dieser Stunde sterben müsste, so würde ich meinen Freunden nichts anderes empfehlen, als dass sie nach meinen Tod aufs Fleißigste Gottes Wort treiben. Denn da wir zuerst nach Gottes Reich trachten müssen, dürfen wir, wenn wir sterben, nicht um unsere Weiber und Kinder sorgen. (…) Denn wenn er uns als seine Diener anerkennt, dann wird uns Gott nicht verlassen. Wenn er uns nicht verlassen wird, wie wird er der Unsrigen vergessen? Wir aber sind seine Diener, weil wir seine Taufe, Evangelium, Abendmahl haben, den Gehorsam gegen Eltern und Obrigkeit predigen und alles, was aus seinem Wort und seiner Einsetzung herkommt, allein anempfehlen. Wenn wir auch Sünder sind und unserem Dienst nicht Genüge leisten, wissen wir doch die Vergebung der Sünden darüber zu decken“.41 Eine Visualisierung aller dieser Felder der apostolischen Tätigkeit finden wir am Wittenberger Reformationsaltar wieder. Gott selbst kümmert sich um Sein Werk, er fordert jedoch auch die unablässige apostolische Arbeit der Menschen ein. Im zentralen Bild auf der Rückseite des Altars sind unter der auferstandenen Christusfigur die in den Stein des gemalten Sarkophags gemeißelten Bibelworte zu lesen: „Mir ist gegeben alle gewalt im himel und erden, Darumb gehet hin und leret alle// volcker vnd teuffet sie im namen des Vaters, und des Sons, und des Heiligen// geists und leret sie halten alles was ich euch befolhen habe. Und sihe, ich bin// bei euch alle tage, bis an der welt ende. Matthei. XXVIII“ (Matt 28:18– 20). Auf der Vorderseite sind die dieser Anweisung Jesu folgenden Reformatoren dargestellt: Sie feiern im Andenken an den Herrn das letzte Abendmahl,42 spenden Taufe43 und erteilen Absolution.44 Luther ist sich der mit seiner Mission einhergehenden Schwierigkeiten und Gefahren bewusst. Er identifiziert sich mit

39 Übersetzung nach Schulze, Lucas Cranach d. J., 140f, hier im Textzusammenhang: „In diesem Traum, der sich indirekt auch auf eine Verheißung des Propheten Obadja (I,20) bezog, bat Melanchthon Gott, er möge „das kleine Sarepta“ als Heimstätte seiner Lehre beschützen. In einem biblischen Ort gleichen Namens hatte seinerzeit der Prophet Elia bei einer Witwe Zuflucht gefunden. Aus fester Glaubensgewissheit heraus ließ Melanchthon nun Gott sprechen: »Niemand kann meinen Händen die Gemeinde, die meine Worte hochhält, entreißen«“. 40 Luthers Werke WA TR, Bd. 5, 574, Nr. 6287, 11. 41 Luthers Werke WA TR, Bd. 3, Nr. 2957a, 116, 8–19; Zitat in deutscher Übersetzung aus: Dithmar, Luthers Tischreden, 105. 42 „VND er nam das Brot / dancket vnd brachs / vnd gabs jnen / vnd sprach / Das ist mein Leib / der fur euch gegeben wird / Das thut zu meinem Gedechtnis. Desselbigen gleichen auch den Kelch / nach dem Abendmal / vnd sprach / Das ist der Kelch / das newe Testament in meinem Blut / das fur euch vergossen wird“ (Luke 22:19–20). Zitat aus: Luther Bibel 1545. 43 „Darumb gehet hin / vnd leret alle Völcker / vnd teuffet sie / im Namen des Vaters / vnd des Sons / vnd des heiligen Geists“ (Matt 28:19). Zitat aus: Luther Bibel 1545. 44 „Welchen jr die sünde erlasset / den sind sie erlassen / Vnd welchen jr sie behaltet / den sind sie behalten“ (John 20:23). Zitat aus: Luther Bibel 1545.

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Moses in dessen biblischem Klageruf „Sende, wen du senden willt!“,45 und dennoch (oder möglicherweise gerade im Zusammenhang mit dieser Identifikation mit der großen Bibelgestalt) machen er und die anderen Reformatoren sich eifrig an die Arbeit im Weinberg des Herrn. Ihre Arbeit bekommt aber den gleichen Lohn wie die Arbeit derer, die im Gleichnis aus Mt 20:16 am frühen Morgen eingestellt wurden. Dies bestätigt der Groschen, den Lucas Cranach in der für die Auszahlung aufgehaltene Hand des Papstes auf dem Epitaph für Paul Eber malte (fig. 58). Denn der Herr des Weinbergs spricht: »Also werden die letzten die ersten / Vnd die ersten die letzten sein« (Matt 20:16).46 In den Porträts der im Weinberg des Herrn arbeitenden Reformatoren kommen ihre Tatkraft und Hingabe in der Ausübung des Wortes Gottes deutlich zum Ausdruck.47 Ein altes Sprichwort sagt: „Der Weinberg braucht keine Gebete, sondern eine Hacke“.48 Dieser Gedanke findet sich hier sehr konkret bildlich umgesetzt. Wie die Reformatoren bei der Arbeit im Weinberg bestimmte Werkzeuge nutzen, so sind sie selbst auch Werkzeuge. Wie Luther betonte: „Denn was ich und ein jeglicher getreuer Diener des Evangelii oder Christi redet und thut in seinem Amt aus Gottes Befehl mit Lehren, Predigen, Trösten, Strafen, Täufen und Abendmahl reichen und Absolviren, dasselbige Alles thut Gott selber durch und in uns, als seinen Werkzeugen“.49 Warum war das Bildnis der sog. Wittenberger Gruppe von so großer Bedeutung für die Legitimierung und Institutionalisierung der Konfession? Es zeigt die Reformatoren als die für das Werk Gottes wirkenden Werkzeuge, als jene, die von Gott selbst aufgerufen wurden. Die Konfession überdauerte, da es ihr an treuen 45 Luthers Werke WA TR, Bd. 2, Nr. 2474, 479, 13: „Christum predigen ist gar ein schwer und fährlich Amt; hätte ichs etwa gewußt, so wollt ich mich nimmermehr dazu begeben haben, sondern gesagt mit Mose: »Sende, wen du senden willt!« Es sollte mich niemand hinan bracht haben“. 46 Zitat aus: Luther Bibel 1545. 47 Hasse bemerkt ganz richtig, dass dieses Schema dem Künstler die Möglichkeit gab, die Aufgabenverteilung unter den Reformatoren darzustellen. Und auch wenn – so Hasse – „jeder […] konzentriert auf seine Arbeit“ ist, arbeiten alle in einem Weinberg im Auftrag eines Herren. Vgl. Hasse, Luther und seine Wittenberger Freunde, 100. 48 http://www.aphorismen.de/zitat/10356 (letzter Zugriff: 11. 08. 2014). In diesem Kontext erscheint die Vorrede Luthers zu Melanchthons Auslegung des Kolosserbriefs besonders bedeutsam, was zu Recht Thulin bemerkt, und nach ihm Hasse, der feststellt: „Das bekannte Epitaph für Paul Eber (…) wirkt wie eine Illustration dieser Vorrede“. Hasse, Luther und seine Wittenberger Freunde, 99f und Anm. 40; vgl. Thulin, Die Reformatoren im Weinberg, 141–5. In der Vorrede lesen wir: „Ich mus die klötze und stemme ausrotten, dornen und hecken weg hawen, die pfützen ausfullen und bin der grobe waldrechter, der die ban brechen und zurichten mus. Aber M[agister] Philipp[u]s feret seuberlich und still daher, bawet und pflanzet, sehet und begeust mit lust, nach dem Gott yhm hat gegeben seine// gaben reichlich“. Zitat aus: Luthers Werke WA 30 II, 68f, 14–1. 49 Luthers Werke WA TR, Bd. 2, Nr. 1289, 31, 7–10.

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Dienern nicht fehlte, selbst als der Vater nicht mehr da war. Sie übernahmen seine Funktion, so wie Bugenhagen in Luthers Leichenpredigt die uns von der Wittenberger Predella wohlbekannte Geste übernahm: die für Johannes den Täufer signifikante, für jeden Prediger typische Geste – der Hinweis auf Jesus.50 Luthers Konfession hat sich bewährt, denn sie wurde auf Fels gegründet und nicht auf Sand errichtet. Ihr Fels war das Evangelium.51

Literatur Andersson, Christiane D., ‚Religiöse Bilder Cranachs im Dienste der Reformation‘, in Büsch, Otto/Rollka, Bodo (Hg.), Humanismus und Reformation als kulturelle Kräfte in der deutschen Geschichte. Ein Tagungsbericht, Berlin/New York 1981, 49–56. Boettcher, Susan R., ‚Von der Trägheit der Memoria. Cranachs Lutheraltarbilder im Zusammenhang der evangelischen Luther-Memoria im späten 16. Jahrhundert‘, in Eibach, Joachim/Sandl, Marcus (Hg.), Protestantische Identität und Erinnerung von der Reformation bis zur Bürgerrechtsbewegung in der DDR, Göttingen 2003, 47–69. Brückner, Wolfgang, Lutherische Bekenntnisgemälde des 16. bis 18. Jahrhundert. Die illustrierte Confessio Augustana, Regensburg 2007. Bugenhagen, Johannes, Christliche pre||digt/ vber der Leich vnd be=||grebnis/des Ehrwirdigen D.|| Martini Luthers/ durch Ern || Johan Bugenhagen Po=||mern/ Doctor/ vnd Pfarrher der || Kirchen zu Wittemberg/|| gethan.||. Zwickau: Wolff Meyerpeck 1546. Digitales Dokument der Universitäts- und Landesbibliothek Sachsen-Anhalt, URN: urn:nbn:de:gbv:3:1–328059. Letzter Zugriff 11. 12. 2015. Bugenhagen, Johannes, Ein Schrifft D./ Johann Bugen=/hagen Pomerani:/ Pastoris der Kirchen zu Wittenberg/ An andere Pastorn und/ Predigern/ Von der jtzigen Kriegs=/ rüstung. Wittenberg: Hans Lufft 1546 (nicht paginiert), Franckeschen Stiftungen zu Halle, Sign. 64B15 [33], 8 Blätter. Burkhardt, Johannes, Stulecie reformacji w Niemczech (1517–1617). Mie˛dzy rewolucja˛ medialna˛ i przełomem instytucjonalnym, Warszawa 2009. Originaltitel: Das Reformationsjahrhundert. Deutsche Geschichte zwischen Medienrevolution und Institutionenbildung 1517–1617, Stuttgart 2002. Dithmar, Reinhard (Hg.), Luthers Tischreden, Weimar und Eisenach 2010. Dr. Martin Luthers Briefe, Sendschreiben und Bedenken, vollständig aus den verschiedenen Ausgaben seiner Werke und Briefe, aus andern Büchern und noch unbenutzten Hand-

50 Grablegung Luthers in der Wittenberger Schlosskirche unter der Kanzel, auf der Johannes Bugenhagen die Leichenpredigt hält. Illustration des Märtyrerbuchs von Ludwig Rabus (4. Teil). Straßburg 1556. Vgl. Schilling, Martin Luther, Abb. S. 599. 51 „Wer zu mir kompt / vnd höret meine rede / vnd thut sie / Den wil ich euch zeigen / wem er gleich ist. // Er ist gleich einem Menschen / der ein Haus bawete / vnd grub tieff / vnd legete den grund auff den Fels. Da aber Gewesser kam / da reis der Strom zum Hause zu / vnd mochts nicht bewegen / Denn es war auff den Fels gegründet“ (Luke 6:47f). Zitat aus: Luther Bibel 1545.

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schriften gesammelt, kritisch und historisch bearbeitet von Dr. Wilhelm Martin Leberecht de Wette, T. 1: Luthers Briefe bis zu seinem Aufenthalt auf Wartburg, Berlin 1825. D. Martin Luthers Werke. Kritische Gesamtausgabe, Weimar 1883–2009 (WA TR Tischreden). Hägglund, Bengt, ‚Die Frage der Willensfreiheit in der Auseinandersetzung zwischen Erasmus und Luther‘, in Renaissance-Reformation. Gegensätze und Gemeinsamkeiten, Vorträge herausgegeben von August Buck, Wiesbaden 1984, 181–95 (Wolfenbütteler Abhandlungen zur Renaissanceforschung in Zusammenarbeit mit dem Wolfenbütteler Arbeitskreis Renaissanceforschung, Hg. Herzog August Bibliothek, Bd. 5). Hasse, Hans-Peter, Luther und seine Wittenberger Freunde. Zum Erscheinungsbild einer Gruppe in der Kunst und Publizistik des 16. Jahrhunderts, in Wartburg Stiftung Eisenach (Hg.), Wartburg-Jahrbuch Sonderband 1996, Wissenschaftliches Kolloquium „Der Mensch Luther und sein Umfeld“ vom 2.–5. Mai 1996 auf der Wartburg, Eisenach 1996, 84–119. Kawerau, Emil, Meienburg, Michael, in ADB 52, 1906, 286ff [Onlinefassung, letzter Zugriff: 11. 12. 2015]: URL: http://www.deutsche-biographie.de/pnd130378453.html?an chor=adb. Krehl, August L.G., ‚Ueber Luthers Begriff von der Kirche‘, Zeitschrift für die historische Theologie 1, 1840, 28–60. Leder, Hans-Günter, ‚Luthers Beziehungen zu seinen Wittenberger Freunden‘, in H. Junghans (Hg.), Leben und Werk Martin Luthers von 1526 bis 1546. Festgabe zu seinem 500. Geburtstag. Im Auftrag des Theologischen Arbeitskreises für Reformationsgeschichte, Bd. 1, Göttingen 1983, 419–40, 863–70. Lucas Cranach d. Ä. Das gesamte graphische Werk. Mit Exempeln aus dem graphischen Werk Lucas Cranach d. J. und der Cranachwerkstatt, Einleitung Johannes Jahn, München 1972. Luther Bibel 1545 (Ausgabe letzer Hand, Onlinefassung, letzter Zugriff 11. 12. 2015.) http://www.bibel-online.net/buch/luther_1545_letzte_hand/lukas/1/#1. Marsch, Angelika, Bilder zur Augsburger Konfession und ihren Jubiläen, Weißenhorn 1980. Nolte, Karl, ‚Die Kirche zu Kemberg und ihr Cranachaltar‘, in W. Staemmler/H. Waldmann (Hg.), Wege des Herrn, Berlin 1968, 86–90. Pfarrerbuch der Kirchenprovinz Sachsen, Bd. 1: Biogramme A-Bo, Verein für Pfarrerinnen und Pfarrer in der Ev. Kirche der Kirchenprovinz Sachsen e.V. (Hg.), Leipzig 2009. Pfarrerbuch der Kirchenprovinz Sachsen, Bd. 9: Biogramme Tr-Z, Verein für Pfarrerinnen und Pfarrer in der Ev. Kirche der Kirchenprovinz Sachsen e.V. (Hg.), Leipzig 2009. Pröhle, Heinrich, Wanckel, Matthias, in ADB 41, 1896, 137f [Onlinefassung, letzter Zugriff: 11. 12. 2015]: URL: http://www.deutsche-biographie.de/pnd117136441.html?an chor=adb. Reichhardt-Rotta, R. Luther im Kirchenkreise Kemberg. Vortrag, gehalten auf dem 2. Kirchentag in Kemberg am 22. April 1928, Kemberg [1928]. Schilling, Heinz, Martin Luther. Rebell in einer Zeit des Umbruchs. Eine Biographie, München 2013. Schulze, Ingrid, Lucas Cranach d. J. und die protestantische Bildkunst in Sachsen und Thüringen. Frömmigkeit, Theologie, Fürstenreformation, Bucha bei Jena 2004. Seyderhelm, Bettina (Konzept und Katalog), Katalog zur Ausstellung der eingereichten Entwürfe aus dem internationalen Wettbewerb für ein Kunstwerk im Chor der Stadt-

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kirche in Kemberg. Eine Ausstellung der Evangelischen Kirchengemeinde Kemberg und des Evangelischen Konsistoriums der Kirchenprovinz Sachsen, Stadtkirche Kemberg 13.10.–1. 11. 1998. Dom Magdeburg 9.11.–22. 11. 1998, Halle 1998. Thulin, Oskar, Cranach-Alta¨re der Reformation, Berlin 1955. Thulin, Oskar, ‚Die Reformatoren im Weinberg des Herrn: ein Gemälde Lucas Cranach d. J.‘ in Lutherjahrbuch 25 (1958), 141–5. Wagenmann, Julius A., Bernhardi, Bartholomäus, in ADB 2, 1875, 459f [Onlinefassung, letzter Zugriff: 11. 12. 2015]: URL: http://www.deutsche-biographie.de/ pnd118960040.html?anchor=adb. Warnke, Martin, Cranachs Luther. Entwürfe für ein Image, Frankfurt am Main 1984. Weimer, Christoph, Luther, Cranach und die Bilder. Gesetz und Evangelium – Schlüssel zum reformatorischen Bildgebrauch, Stuttgart 1999.

Justyna Chodasewicz

Zwischen Repräsentation und Glaubensbekenntnis. Die Grabanlagen der Familie von Schaffgotsch in Reußendorf und Greiffenberg

Die Grabmäler der Familie von Schaffgotsch Die Familie von Schaffgotsch hat eine lange und reiche Geschichte in Schlesien, wo die aus der Mark Meißen stammende Familie bereits im späten 13. Jahrhundert eintraf. Von Anfang an war sie in den Kreisen der schlesischen Herzöge aktiv und stieg in der lokalen ständischen Rangordnung rasch auf. In ihren ersten Jahrhunderten in Schlesien erweiterte die Familie ihren Besitz systematisch, und Mitglieder der Familie bekleideten immer höhere Ämter im Dienst der aufeinanderfolgenden Herrscher aus der Piastendynastie.1 Die Schaffgotts waren Stifter zahlreicher künstlerischer Projekte, wobei zweifellos politische und wirtschaftliche Faktoren wie die engen Kontakte zum Fürstenhaus und die großen Ländereien im Besitz der Familie eine Rolle spielten. Im 16. Jahrhundert verstärkten die Schaffgotsch ihre Aktivitäten als Stifter und Mäzene und gaben ihnen eine individuellere Prägung. An den in dieser Zeit gestifteten Werken kann man deutlich erkennen, dass die Familie nicht nur das Ziel verfolgte, ihren Familienreichtum und ihre gesellschaftliche Position prunkvoll zu präsentieren, sondern dass sie auch ihre Gesinnung, ihre kulturelle und konfessionelle Identität, darstellen wollte. Diese Haltung zeigt sich an der Finanzierung sowohl großer architektonischer Bauten als auch kleinerer Werke wie Gruften und Grabdenkmälern. In den Bildprogrammen der zwei Renaissance-Gruften, die für verschiedene Linien der Familie von Schaffgotsch errichtet wurden, kommen all diese Aspekte zum Ausdruck. Den dort vereinten Grabmälern wurden unterschiedliche Formen verliehen, zweifellos ist aber ihr Ideensinngehalt sehr ähnlich und auf zwei Hauptelemente ausgerichtet: die Familienrepräsentation und die Darstellung des Glaubensbekenntnisses.

1 Zur Geschichte der Familie Schaffgotsch vgl. unlängst etwa: Jurek, Obce rycerstwo, 278–81; Kuzio-Podrucki, Das Haus; Schmilewski, Das Geschlecht der Schaffgotsch, 1–18; Kuzio-Podrucki, Schaffgotschowie.

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In der kleinen Pfarrkirche in Reußendorf (Raszów) in Schlesien wurden Mitglieder der Familie von Schaffgotsch in der 2. Hälfte des 16. Jh. beigesetzt. 1577 wurde an die Südseite der Kirche eine rechteckige Grabkapelle angebaut.2 Bis heute sind hier zwei Tumbengrabmäler für Hans I. (†1565) und seine Frau Salomea von Nimptsch (†1567) sowie für Hans II. (†1572) und seine Frau Margaretha von Hochberg (†1574) erhalten (fig. 59–60). Unter den weiteren Grabmonumenten aus den Jahren 1580–1621 ist auch ein großes, repräsentatives Epitaph für Anton(?) von Schaffgotsch (ca. 1580) besonders interessant3 (fig. 61). Das Ensemble der Grabmäler in Reußendorf ist eine der prächtigsten adeligen Grabanlagen in Schlesien. Traditionelle Grabmalformen wurden geschickt verknüpft mit moderner Bearbeitung und italienischen Ornamenten im Stil der Renaissance. Für die Einzigartigkeit der Reußendorfer Nekropole ist die Einführung neuer ikonographischer Themen entscheidend, durch die die Grabmäler nicht länger nur Träger der Erinnerung an die Verstorbenen blieben, sondern auch zum Sinnbild ihrer konfessionellen Zugehörigkeit wurden. Das ist besonders wichtig, denn die Schaffgotsch folgten als erste im Kreis Landeshut (Kamienna Góra) der Lehre Luthers, und in Reußendorf fanden 1558 die ersten lutherischen Gottesdienste in der Region statt.4 Die ältesten Grabstätten in Reußendorf (für Hans I. und Hans II.) sind Tumbengrabmäler. Diese traditionelle Form stammt noch aus dem Mittelalter und war ursprünglich fürstlichen oder königlichen Grabstätten vorbehalten. Das Tumbengrabmal kommt in Schlesien schon seit dem 14. Jahrhundert vor, auch in der Nähe von Landeshut, nämlich in der Nekropole der Herzöge von Schweidnitz-Jauer in der Zisterzienserabtei in Grüssau (Krzeszów). Offensichtlich hatten die Nähe einer Piastengruft5 und die engen Beziehungen der Familie von Schaffgotsch zu den dort ruhenden Herzögen (Bolko I. und Bolko II.) wesentlichen Einfluss auf die Wahl dieser Grabmalform. Repräsentative Tumbengrabmäler wurden in Schlesien in den folgenden Jahrhunderten bis zum Anfang des 17. Jahrhunderts gern errichtet, hauptsächlich in herzoglichen Kreisen. Die Tumben in Reußendorf orientieren sich vornehmlich an schlesischen Grabmälern aus dem 16. Jh., etwa am Grabmal für Herzog Karl I. von Münsterberg (Podiebrad) und seine Frau Anna von Sagan in Frankenstein (1544) (fig. 62), am Grabmal für Herzog Friedrich II. von Liegnitz und Brieg und seine beiden Ehe2 Skoczylas-Stadnik, O nagrobkach, 12. 3 Zu den Grabsteinen in Reußendorf vgl. u. a.: Knoetel, Figurengrabmäler, 18; Lutsch, Verzeichnis, 394; Nentwig, Schaffgotsch’sche Gotteshäuser, 169–73; Zlat, Rzez´ba, 28–9; Harasimowicz, Mors, 59, 117, 123; Harasimowicz, Tres´ci, 29, 31; Harasimowicz, Reußendorf, 267–75; Kwas´niewski, Mistrz G.M., 71–86; Skoczylas-Stadnik, O nagrobkach, 10–36; Chodasewicz, Nagrobki i epitafia, 57–69. 4 Brügmann, Gnadenkirche, 7. 5 Czechowicz, Ksia˛z˙e˛cy mecenat, 646–7.

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frauen (ca. 1547) in Liegnitz (Legnica), und an den Grabmälern in Oels (Oles´nica) für Herzog Georg II. von Münsterberg (Podiebrad) (1554) und für Herzog Johann von Münsterberg (Podiebrad) und seine Frau Krystyna Szydłowiecka (1557).6 Grabmonumente in Tumbenform, deren Errichtung von Adelsfamilien veranlasst wurde, waren in Schlesien im 16. Jahrhundert sehr selten. Einer dieser Einzelfälle ist die Tumba für Wentzel und Barbara von Zeidlitz (1567) in Liebenthal (Lubomierz).7

Bild und Konfession Dass dieses traditionell den Beisetzungen von Herzögen vorbehaltene Grabmodell für Reußendorf gewählt wurde, zeigt auf, wie sehr und bewusst die Familie von Schaffgotsch darum bemüht war, Herzögen gleichgestellt zu werden. Die Form ihrer Grabmäler sollte sie dem gewünschten sozialen Status näher bringen, auch wenn dies nur auf dem Gebiet der Kunst möglich war. Einen ähnlichen Zweck erfüllten das Wappenprogramm und die Grabinschriften, welche die Verdienste der Verstorbenen rühmten. Neben der Darstellung des Familienrangs enthalten die Bildprogramme der Grabmäler zugleich ein klares Manifest ihrer Konfession. Die Auftraggeber betonten ihren neuen lutherischen Glauben vor allem durch die entsprechende Wahl der Bildmotive. Am Grabmal für Hans I. erkennt man in den Reliefs an den Seiten der Tumba Hinweise auf das erste Kapitel des ersten Buchs Mose (Genesis). Auf der Frontplatte der Tumba wird die Erschaffung Evas dargestellt (Gen 2:21–2). Auf der linken Platte sehen wir die Szene der Belehrung Adams und Evas durch Gott und den Sündenfall (Gen 3:2–3; 3:6–7). In die Rückplatte wurde die Szene der Vertreibung aus dem Paradies in Relief gemeißelt (fig. 63). Der ganze Zyklus enthält eine für das orthodoxe Luthertum typische Botschaft. Das Bildprogramm zeigt den Menschen als sündiges Wesen, das den eigenen Schwächen erliegt. Der Mensch wurde für seine Taten mit dem Fluch der Vergänglichkeit bestraft. Gleichzeitig drückt das Bildprogramm die der Grundlehre der Reformation entsprechende Überzeugung aus, dass die Gläubigen durch die Stärke ihres Glaubens gerechtfertigt werden.8 Diese biblischen Szenen ergänzen die eschatologische Aussage des Grabmals. Die Figuren der Ehepaare, die auf dem Tumbendeckel liegen, strahlen Zuversicht auf die Gerechtigkeit des göttlichen Urteils aus. Hans I. und seine Frau Salomea werden als Kinder und Erben der ersten Eltern Adam und Eva dargestellt. 6 Zlat, Rzez´ba, 27–8; Harasimowicz, Reußendorf, 271. 7 Kwas´niewski, Mistrz G.M., 73. 8 Harasimowicz, Mors, 123.

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An der Frontplatte der Tumba für Hans II. erkennen wir eine Darstellung Christi am Kreuz (fig. 64). Das kniende Ehepaar betet zum Gottessohn. Die Betenden glauben, dass die Vergebung der Sünden durch die Kreuzigung Christi und seine Auferstehung vollbracht wurde. Dieses Motiv wird in der lutherischen Grabmalkunst gern eingesetzt, denn es hat einen starken Bezug zur evangelischen Frömmigkeit, die sich auf die im Tod Christi vollendete Gottesgnade der Erlösung konzentriert. Für einen späteren Grabstein, wahrscheinlich für Anton von Schaffgotsch, wird nicht mehr die traditionelle Tumba, sondern die modernere Form eines Wandgrabmals mit Standfigur verwendet. In Schlesien waren derartige Grabmäler kein Novum. In der Familie von Schaffgotsch (in der gleichen Abstammungslinie von Landeshut) tauchte diese Grabmalform schon früher auf. 1564 erhielt Ulrich von Schaffgotsch ein ähnliches Epitaph in der Breslauer Elisabethkirche9 (fig. 65). Aber im Falle des Grabsteines aus Reußendorf veränderte sich nicht nur die Form des Grabmals, sondern auch der gedankliche Aspekt des Bildprogramms. Hier wurde die religiöse Überzeugung des Verstorbenen noch deutlicher hervorgehoben. Das Grabmal erhielt einen modernen architektonischen Aufbau, der an die Form eines Triumphbogens anknüpft und das Tor der Erlösung symbolisiert, also den Sieg über den Tod. Im Abschluss wird der seine Hand zum Segen erhebende Gottvater dargestellt. Die dreiteilige Aureole im Hintergrund kann man als Anspielung auf die Heilige Dreifaltigkeit auslegen. Beiderseits des Abschlusses wird je ein Pelikan als allegorisches Motiv der Erlösung durch Blutopfer dargestellt. Er sollte die Gemeindemitglieder daran erinnern, dass Christus mit dem eigenen Blut und Märtyrertum für die Sünden der Menschen gebüßt hat. Im zentralen Teil des Abschlusses sehen wir den auferstandenen Christus, der sein Grab verlässt und mit der Stange der Siegesfahne den Drachen schlägt, also Sünde und Tod besiegt (fig. 61). Ergänzt wird das Bild durch eine Inschrift am Gebälkfries mit einem Zitat aus dem Lukasevangelium, das von der Auferstehung des Sohnes der Witwe von Nain handelt (Luke 7:11): der herr ihesvs sprach zv der widwen zv naim weine nicht/vnd er traf hinzv vnd rvret den sarckan, vnd die treger stvnden/vnd er sprach, ivnglinich sage dir stehl avf vnd der todte richtet sich avf. Das Zitat schließt eine Fürbitte ab: o herre ihesv christe, erwecke mich auch zvm ewigen leben amen. Unterhalb des Sockels ist noch eine weitere Inschrift aus dem Matthäusevangelium sichtbar: sohn wird kommen zvr einer stvnde, da ir nicht meine … mat xxiiii.10

9 Ke˛błowski, Rzez´ba, 89–93; Harasimowicz, Mors, 62. 10 Heute ist die Inschrift teilweise unlesbar. Alle Inschriften in Skoczylas-Stadnik, O nagrobkach, 10–36.

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Das ist ein klares Glaubensbekenntnis: Die Inschrift betont noch einmal die Gewissheit des Erlösungswerks Christi. In diesem Epitaph, in dem die konfessionelle Aussage die Hauptrolle spielt, wird jedoch auf die Darstellung der Familienreputation und Antons hoher Position nicht verzichtet. Sie wird sowohl durch die Körperstellung des verstorbenen Ritters, der auf einem Löwen steht, als auch durch Wappen, die seine adelige Herkunft bestätigen, betont. So sehen wir hier die ausdrückliche Darstellung der konfessionellen Zugehörigkeit und Bedeutung der Familie. Aber damit nicht genug: An einem weiteren Auftragswerk für die Familie von Schaffgotsch beobachten wir eine dynamische Entwicklung protestantischer Memoria sowohl in ihrer künstlerischen Form als auch in ihrem Bildprogramm. In den 1580er Jahren entstand das besonders prächtige Grabdenkmal für die Familie von Hans Schaffgotsch aus Kynast (†1584) und seiner Frau Magdalena von Zedlitz (†1585) in der Grabkapelle der Pfarrkirche St. Hedwig in Greiffenberg (Gryfów S´la˛ski)11 (fig. 66). Das Greiffenberger Denkmal ist ein großes architektonisches Wandgrabmal, in dem (noch deutlicher als in Reußendorf) die Ansprüche der Familie zum Ausdruck kommen. Die Repräsentation der Dynastie und die Legitimierung des Standes wurden vor allem durch das umfangreiche Wappenprogramm in den Vordergrund gestellt. Vom Status der Familie Schaffgotsch zeugen zweifellos auch die Ausmaße des Grabsteins mit sechs lebensgroßen, nahezu vollplastischen Standfiguren der Verstorbenen – Hans II. (†1584), Hans Ulrich (†1589), Gotthard (†1576), Christoph (†1601) und seiner Frau Magdalena von Schaffgotsch (†1587) und der Witwe von Hans, Magdalena von Zedlitz (†1585). Die Darstellungen der Personen wurden in flachen Nischen über dem angedeuteten Triumphbogen eingefügt. Die ganze Darstellung ergänzen Inschrifttafeln, die auf die Verdienste der Verstorbenen hinweisen.12 Unter dem ikonographischen Aspekt wurde das Ganze um die Darstellung Christi am Kreuz herum angeordnet. Das Bildprogramm ergänzen Szenen aus dem Leben Christi, im Hoch- und Flachrelief in drei Reihen ausgeführt. Zwei horizontale Reihen bilden hier Flachreliefs mit der Anbetung der drei Weisen, dem Abendmahl und dem Gebet am Ölberg sowie mit der Kreuzigung, der Grablegung und der Himmelfahrt. In der vertikalen Reihe sind neben der Kreuzigung auch das Abendmahl, die Grablegung und zum Schluss die Aufer11 Zum Grabstein in Greiffenberg vgl. Lutsch, Verzeichnis, 489; Nentwig, Schaffgotsch’sche Gotteshäuser, 133–66; Haendcke, Geschichte der Plastik Schlesiens, 229; Bimler, Renaissanceplastik, 152–4; Hanke, St. Hedwig, 38–43; Bachmin´ski, Gryfów, 46–9; Zlat, Rzez´ba, 41; Harasimowicz, Mors, 67–8; Olczak, Dzieje Gryfowa, 156–9; Harasimowicz, Reußendorf, 275– 85; Chodasewicz, Nagrobki i epitafia, 57–69. 12 Inschriften in Harasimowicz, Reußendorf, 275–8.

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stehung Christi zu sehen. Darüber hinaus zieren das Grabmal Figuren der vier Apostel und Engel mit Leidenswerkzeugen. Die Aussage ergänzen Bibelzitate: ich weis(s), das(s) mein erloser lebet, der wird mich hernach aus der erden aufferwecken. und ich werde in meinem fleisch got sehen (Job 19:25–6); leben wir, so leben wir dem herren, sterben wir, so sterben wir dem herren. wir leben oder sterben, so sind wir des herren (Rom 14:8); christus ist mein leben, sterben ist mein gewin(n) (Phil 1:21). Unter Berücksichtigung aller dieser Bestandteile des aus Bild und Wort zusammengestellten Ideenprogramms kann das Grabmal für die Familie von Schaffgotsch in Greiffenberg als vollkommenes Werk evangelischer Grabkunst betrachtet werden. Dieses Grabmal bildet die direkte Bestätigung der neuen lutherischen Frömmigkeit der Stifter.

Lutherische Grabkunst Am Beispiel der vier behandelten Grabmäler kann man sehr deutlich die dynamische Entwicklung lutherischer Memoria vom traditionellen Tumbengrabmal, dessen Form noch aus dem Mittelalter stammt, über das Wandgrabmal, das den Verstorbenen innerhalb einer von prächtigen Pilastern gesäumten Architektur zeigt, bis zum überaus ansehnlichen Grabmal mit vollplastischen Standfiguren erkennen. Gleichzeitig haben sich auch die Aussagen zu Glaubensfragen und die Bildprogramme entwickelt. Im Grabmal für Hans I. wurden Motive aus dem Alten Testament, die die neue Frömmigkeit nur schwach hervorhoben, eingesetzt. Das Programm verweist einerseits auf die Todesfurcht, andererseits auf die Heilsgewissheit gläubiger Christen. Im Grabmal für Hans II. wurde bereits die für evangelische Grabmalkunst typische Darstellung der Kreuzverehrung eingesetzt. Im Wandgrabmal für Anton erscheint schon ein umfangreiches protestantisches Programm, das sich auf den auferstandenen Christus konzentriert. Allegorische Motive und Bibelzitate betonen die entscheidende Rolle Christi im Erlösungswerk. Am Schluss steht das Grabmal von Greiffenberg mit dem umfangreichen christologischen Programm mit zahlreichen Inschriften und Bibelzitaten. Das Grabmal von Greiffenberg stellt mit seiner Auslegung der lutherischen Frömmigkeit schon ein vollkommenes Werk evangelischer Kunst dar.

Literatur Bachmin´ski, Jerzy, Gryfów, Gryf, Lubomierz (Wrocław: Zakład Narodowy im. Ossolin´skich, 1964). Bimler, Kurt, Die schlesische Renaissanceplastik (Breslau: Maruschke & Berendt, 1934).

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Brügmann, Martin, Die Gnadenkirche zur Heiligen Dreifaltigkeit vor Landeshut in Schlesien (Düsseldorf: Verlag Unser Weg, 1969). Chodasewicz, Justyna, ‘Nagrobki i epitafia Schaffgotschów na S´la˛sku w latach 1500–1635’, Roczniki Sztuki S´la˛skiej XXVI (2017) 57–69. Czechowicz, Bogusław, Ksia˛z˙e˛cy mecenat artystyczny na S´la˛sku u schyłku ´sredniowiecza (Warszawa: Wydawnictwo DiG, 2005). Haendcke, Berthold, ‘Zur Geschichte der Plastik Schlesiens von ca. 1550–1750’, Repertorium für Kunstwissenschaft 26 (1903) 223–35. Hanke, Augustin, Katholische Pfarrkirche zu St. Hedwig, Greiffenberg in Schl., mit den Filialkirchen Langenöls, Schosdorf, Welkersdorf (Breslau: Frankes, 1939). Harasimowicz, Jan, Mors janua vitae. S´la˛skie epitafia i nagrobki wieku reformacji, (Wrocław: Wydawnictwo Uniwersytetu Wrocławskiego, 1992). Harasimowicz, Jan, ‘Reußendorf – Greiffenberg – Altkemnitz. Drei evangelische Pfarrkirchen der Familie Schaffgotsch im schlesischen Gebirgsland’, in J. Bahlcke/U. Schmilewski/T. Wünsch (Hg.), Das Haus Schaffgotsch. Konfession, Politik und Gedächtnis eines schlesischen Adelsgeschlechts vom Mittelalter bis zur Moderne (Würzburg: Bergstadtverlag, 2010) 267–90. Harasimowicz, Jan, Tres´ci i funkcje ideowe sztuki ´sla˛skiej reformacji 1520–1650 (Wrocław: Wydawnictwo Uniwersytetu Wrocławskiego, 1986). Jurek, Tomasz, Obce rycerstwo na S´la˛sku do połowy XIV wieku (Poznan´: Wydawnictwo Poznan´skiego Towarzystwa Przyjacio´ł Nauk, 1996). Ke˛błowski, Janusz, Renesansowa rzez´ba na S´la˛sku 1500–1560 (Poznan´: Pan´stwowe Wydawnictwo Naukowe 1967). Knoetel, Paul, Die Figurengrabmäler Schlesiens (Kattowitz: Siwinna, 1890). Kuzio-Podrucki, Arkadiusz, Das Haus von Schaffgotsch. Das wechselvolle Schicksal einer schlesischen Adelsdynastie (Tarnowskie Góry: Drukpol 2009). Kuzio-Podrucki, Arkadiusz, Schaffgotschowie. Panowie na Chojniku i Cieplicach (Jelenia Góra: Ad Rem, 2013). Kwas´niewski, Artur, ‘Mistrz G.M. i jego warsztat. Przyczynek do dziejów sztuki sepulkralnej na S´la˛sku w drugiej połowie XVI wieku’, in B. Czechowicz/A. Dobrzyniecki (Hg.), O sztuce sepulkralnej na S´la˛sku (Materiały z sesji Oddziału Wrocławskiego Stowarzyszenia Historyków Sztuki, 25–6 paz´dziernika 1996 roku) (Wrocław: Stowarzyszenie Historyków Sztuki, Oddział Wrocławski, 1996) 71–86. Lutsch, Hans, Verzeichnis der Kunstdenkmäler der Provinz Schlesien, Bd. III (Breslau: Bergstadtverlag Wilhelm Gottlieb Korn, 1891). Nentwig, Heinrich, ‘Schaffgotsch’sche Gotteshäuser und Denkmäler im Riesen- und Isergebirge’, Mitteilungen aus dem Reichsgräflich Schaffgotsch’schen Archive 2 (1898) 133–66, 169–73. Olczak, Mariusz, Dzieje Gryfowa S´la˛skiego i zamku Gryf (Warszawa: Oppidum, 2001). Schmilewski, Ulrich, ‘Das Geschlecht der Schaffgotsch – ein genealogisch-historischer Überblick vom 13. bis zum 20. Jahrhundert’, in J. Bahlcke/U. Schmilewski/T. Wünsch (Hg.), Das Haus Schaffgotsch. Konfession, Politik und Gedächtnis eines schlesischen Adelsgeschlechts vom Mittelalter bis zur Moderne (Würzburg: Bergstadtverlag, 2010) 1–18. Skoczylas-Stadnik, Barbara, ‘O renesansowych nagrobkach w Raszowie’, in B. SkoczylasStadnik/R.Stelmach/P.Burchardt (Hg.), Mauzoleum rycerskiej rodziny von Schaffgotsch w Raszowie (Kamienna Góra: Urza˛d Gminy, 2010) 10–36.

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Zlat, Mieczysław, ‘S´la˛ska rzez´ba nagrobkowa XVI wieku wobec włoskiego renesansu’, in B. Steinborn (Hg.), Ze studiów na sztuka˛ XVI wieku na S´la˛sku i w krajach sa˛siednich (Wrocław: Muzeum S´la˛ skie, 1968) 17–42.

Kathrin Ellwardt

A church of free peasants and the semantics of representation: Lüdingworth in Land Hadeln

Introduction In regional tourist pamphlets, the parish church of Lüdingworth is promoted as the ‘Lüdingworther Bauerndom’, the ‘peasants’ cathedral’. It has obviously never been a cathedral, hence the term does not have any historical significance, but it indicates that this church is seen as particular. The most striking features of the interior are the hundreds of coats of arms of local peasant families, which are painted on the ceiling or are part of the furnishings. There is more behind this phenomenon than just a nostalgic or folkloristic notion of tough, self-conscious peasants who withstood both the powers of the North Sea and the ambitions of feudalistic rulers. In the early modern era, the use of coats of arms always indicated certain rights and privileges, and people were not free to use them at random. Therefore, their being used in the church of Lüdingworth resembles court and patronage churches in absolutist territories.

The symbols of governmental representation After the Reformation, Protestant territories lacked the hierarchy of the Roman Catholic Church. The lay rulers assumed that role and became responsible for religious matters in addition to their practical government, as expressed in the German term Landesherrliches Kirchenregiment. In Protestant territories within the Holy Roman Empire, the prince, duke, count or imperial knight was at the same time the bishop of his territory’s church and held the jus episcopale, the bishop’s rights.1 The jus episcopale must be distinguished from the jus patronatus. The right of patronage included that of selecting the parsons and teachers (presentation and 1 Kathrin Ellwardt, Evangelischer Kirchenbau in Deutschland (Petersberg: Michael Imhof Verlag, 2008), 60f.

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collation), receiving taxes and duties from the people in the parish, along with honorary rights such as a special seat or a burial place inside the church, and, on the other hand, the obligation to contribute to the costs of construction and maintenance of the church building. The patron might be a noble family, an ecclesiastical institution, the magistrate of a town or the ruling prince himself. Many governments aimed at holding as many patronages as possible in order to have undivided control over their churches. The German term Repräsentation, which can only inaccurately be translated as ‘representation’, or official recognition, in English, means documenting this role and position by ceremonies, impressive buildings and artworks that befit the holders’ status. The holders – ruler and bishop, or patron – used a sophisticated system of signs and symbols to document their rank and legal position. The symbolic language and meaning of these signs was widely understood in the feudal society of the early modern era. The most common media were inscriptions and coats of arms (fig. 67). Both were often placed on the outer wall of the building, above the main portal or in another prominent place on the main façade. Most Renaissance and Baroque churches have either one or the other. This applies to Catholic churches as well. Any visitor or passer-by had to know who was in charge of this church and territory. Ornamental monograms referring to the name and title of the governor, often together with his spouse’s, were also frequent, especially in the first half of the eighteenth century. Inscriptions name the ruler or patron, often as the person who actively ‘built’ the church. Depending on the financial situation of the court in question, the project may have received substantial support on the part of the government, but not necessarily. Nevertheless, the decision and permission of the head of the state and church was considered necessary for the construction works to start, no matter who actually paid for materials and labour.2 A church that hosted the sepulchral site of a dynasty was of particular value to them. Monumental tombs and epitaphs dignified individual members of the family and guaranteed their everlasting posthumous fame. The palace chapels of the post-Reformation era were the first newly built churches which were designed in accordance with the new theology. They are confessions of faith, expressed by means of the architecture and a specific Lutheran iconography. Paintings such as the altarpiece (fig. 68) in the palace chapel of Augustusburg, a hunting palace in the Electorate of Saxony, express both the elector’s role as head of the country’s government and church, and his personal 2 Klaus Raschzok, Lutherischer Kirchenbau und Kirchenraum im Zeitalter des Absolutismus. Dargestellt am Beispiel des Markgraftums Brandenburg-Ansbach 1672–1791 (Frankfurt a.M./ Bern/New York/Paris: Peter Lang, 1988), 82–91.

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faith in Christ and salvation through the Lord’s mercy. The painting on the altar, dated 1571, depicts August I, his wife and children all kneeling under the cross. They will thus be forever present in their court chapel. The chapels within the palaces were used by the prince, his family and his court, including the servants. The various seats in the galleries and along the nave were assigned according to each person’s rank in the court’s hierarchy. In the parish churches of the cities and towns with a Residenz, both the court and the town’s parish community attended the service, hence all classes of society were present, and each person had his/her assigned seat. Here the distribution according to the owners’ social status had to be differentiated even more than in mere court chapels.3 The most prominent location in these churches is occupied by the box for the princely family. The governmental box is an important element of representation.4 The façades of Herrschaftslogen are embellished with architectural structures and ornaments in stucco or carved wood, such as the one in Weilburg (fig. 69). The coat of arms of the ruler (or a combined one of husband and wife) was superimposed on the front and indicated the owner and builder. Even when the ruler did not personally attend the service, the box was his reserved seat so that his presence was kept before the eyes of the congregation. In places which were rarely visited by the governor himself but were by the seat of government authorities and administrative bodies, governmental boxes were also installed in the local church: there they were occupied by the representatives of the government, the bailiff or another local civil servant. In addition to the coats of arms, further elements could be added. In Rudolstadt, for instance, the family tree of the dynasty of Schwarzburg-Rudolstadt is depicted on the front of the box to emphasise their tradition. In the palace chapel of Eisenberg (Saxony), the ducal box shows the coat of arms of Duke Christian at the top, those of his two wives below this and a painting of his portrait in the centre. Saxe-Eisenberg was of secondary importance and only for one generation: the only building project that Duke Christian actually completed in his lifetime was the palace chapel, hence its significance as a monument to the short regency and existence of Saxe-Eisenberg.5

3 Reinhold Wex, Ordnung und Unfriede. Raumprobleme des protestantischen Kirchenbaus im 17. und 18. Jahrhundert in Deutschland (Marburg: Jonas Verlag, 1984); Kathrin Ellwardt, ‘Die Sitzordnung in der Weilburger Schloß- und Stadtkirche in der ersten Hälfte des 18. Jahrhunderts’, Jahrbuch der Hessischen Kirchengeschichtlichen Vereinigung 47 (1996) 41–66. 4 Cf. Gotthar Kiessling, Der Herrschaftsstand. Aspekte repräsentativer Gestaltung im evangelischen Kirchenbau (München: Scaneg, 1995). 5 Uta Rohde, Die Schloßkapelle in Eisenberg/Thüringen (MA thesis; Philipps-Universität Marburg, 1994).

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Noble patrons enjoyed the same honorary rights and used the same symbols of representation as the rulers. Mainly in northern and north-eastern Germany, Prussia and Saxony, many local noble families were subjects of a larger state, hence not independent. However, they were holders of the patronage over a village church, or had their own chapel within the grounds of their manor, such as the one in Wieckenberg (fig. 70) in the Duchy of Braunschweig-Lüneburg. The owner, Francesco Maria Capellini, named Stechinelli, was a social climber. Stechinelli was an Italian who created an important career for himself at the court in Celle, was granted nobility and then bought this manor and built the chapel. He himself was originally Roman Catholic but built the Protestant chapel for his wife and servants in the Lutheran country. The patronage box of the Stechinelli family is located within the chancel, on the left, close to the altar. In the Protestant imperial cities, the magistrate assumed the role of government and church patron. Instead of a governmental box as seat for the prince or his representative, the main city churches had a box for the mayor and the members of the council. Such a Magistratsgestühl is, for example, still preserved in Nikolaikirche in the Hanseatic city of Stralsund. Yet what happened when there were no governmental authorities present, and no noble patron? Who was ‘represented’ in a church of free peasants?

The peasant community of Land Hadeln Examples of free peasant communities are very rare within the Holy Roman Empire of the German Nation. Perhaps the only one that persisted until the end of the Empire in 1806 is Land Hadeln. Hadeln is to be found in north-western Germany, on the left bank of the mouth of the river Elbe. The historical territory consisted of twelve Kirchspiele (parish communities) and one single town, Otterndorf, which had received its town charter in 1400. While nearly everywhere the rural populations were in bondage and became subjects of a territorial government, in this area on the shores of the North Sea three communities of peasants managed to maintain their personal freedom and relative independence after the end of the Middle Ages: Wursten, Hadeln and Dithmarschen. Wursten and Dithmarschen were engulfed by larger neighbouring territories in the sixteenth century. Wursten was taken over by the archbishop of Bremen in 1518,6 and Dithmarschen was finally conquered by the dukes of 6 Cf. Chronik des Landes Hadeln: nebst interessanten Auszügen aus der Geschichte der Aemter Ritzebüttel, Bederkesa und Neuhaus, des Landes Wursten und des Landes Kehdingen (Otterndorf, 1843), 127–30.

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Holstein in 1559.7 Only the peasants of Hadeln managed to preserve their medieval privileges until 1806. The people of Hadeln were personally free, but not did not have imperial immediacy. In about the year 1200, they were subjected to the duke of SaxeLauenburg. The dukes, however, were wise enough not to treat them as subjects, but as equal partners. Governmental decrees were developed in mutual agreement between government and estates, instead of being decided by the higher authorities. If the latter ever tried to enforce their governmental power, they sadly failed.8 The peasants of Hadeln should not be underestimated: they were not just farmers. They lived in the vicinity of a couple of Hanseatic cities and along the important trade route of the Elbe river; moreover, the fertile soil of the marshland was ideal for breeding cattle and horses. They were, therefore, wealthy, and their wealth and their privileges made them ambitious. Hadeln had its own Latin school in Otterndorf, and many families even sent their sons to university. They were well aware of their social and economic importance. In Saxe-Lauenburg, the normal church constitution as described above was valid: the duke was the Protestant bishop, and perhaps there were additional patrons in some places. Therefore, in Lauenburg the dukes were represented in church just like any other Protestant prince. However: this applied to Ämter Lauenburg and Neuhaus, the territories further east, but not to Hadeln. Every new duke received the homage of Hadeln’s inhabitants in a ceremony that took place in Warningsacker, a field near Otterndorf. Immediately afterwards, the new ruler had to confirm the Hadelners’ medieval privileges. Whenever the estates granted the duke anything, for example taxes, they insisted on having their rights confirmed. The self-administration and special rights of Hadeln were slowly reduced only in the nineteenth century, although some remained valid until 1932. These privileges, which date back to the Middle Ages, included both secular and religious matters. The village communities had their own administration and jurisdiction. There was, therefore, a Landesherrschaft, a territorial government, but one that made little appearance.

7 Jörg Rathjen, ‘Die geteilte Einheit: Schleswig-Holstein zwischen König und Herzog 1490–1721’, in Witt, Jann M./Vosgerau, Heiko (ed.), Geschichte Schleswig-Holsteins (Heide: Boyens, 2010) 139–76. 8 Cf. Gertrud Kuhle, ‘Die ständische Selbstverwaltung im Lande Hadeln’, De Worth. Schriftenreihe des Geschichts- und Heimatvereins Lüdingworth von 1988 e.V. 9 (1997) 16–46; Heinrich Rüther, Geschichte des Landes Hadeln (Otterndorf: J. & R. Hottendorf, 1949); Hinrich Gerkens, Chronik des Kirchspiels Lüdingworth. 700 Jahre Lüdingworth 1298–1998 (Cuxhaven-Lüdingworth: Selbstverlag, 2000).

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In addition to this, in the churches of Hadeln, the patronage right was held by the parish community itself. The members obtained the jus patronatus immediately after the Reformation by buying it from the Catholic ecclesiastical bodies.

The church of Lüdingworth Of the twelve parish churches, the one in Lüdingworth, nowadays part of the city of Cuxhaven, is the best preserved and the most impressive. From the outside the church does not look very spectacular. The nave and the steeple in the west are of medieval origin, repeatedly repaired and refurbished throughout the centuries. In 1608/9 the east chancel was added. The elaborate, colourful interior (fig. 71) dates mostly from the seventeenth and eighteenth century, with a few older pieces having been integrated into it. Being a village church, the quality of the craftmanship is remarkable. Not much has been changed since 1800 except for the removal of the supporting pillars in the centre of the nave during a renovation in the 1950s.9 Each and every piece is inscribed with the names and the coats of arms of the people who donated money. All the peasants of Hadeln had their family crests, which are depicted in great number throughout the church interior. The governing dynasty, Saxe-Lauenburg, also appears on the church of Lüdingworth but only in one single spot: on the outside wall of the chancel (fig. 72). The two large coats of arms of Duke Franz II of Saxe-Lauenburg and his spouse Maria of Braunschweig-Wolfenbüttel are dated 1608, the year when the chancel was built. Below them, there is a long row of peasants’ arms. However, this is the ‘backdoor’ to the church, on the eastern side, facing the churchyard. The main entrances to the church are on the opposite side. Therefore, no one, apart from mourners at funerals and visitors to the cemetery, went past here. Inside the church there is no sign of Saxe-Lauenburg. The peasants, on the contrary, placed their family crests everywhere. The painted ceiling (fig. 73) dates from about the same time, from 1600 to 1620: opinions differ, but 1620 is the most likely date.10 The ceiling displays medallions with portraits of prophets from the

9 Alfred Weckwerth, St Jacobi Cuxhaven-Lüdingworth (Regensburg: Verlag Schnell & Steiner, 1967); Egon Wille, ‘Die Renovierung unserer Jacobi-Kirche. Ein kleiner Blick zurück’, De Worth. Schriftenreihe des Geschichts- und Heimatvereins Lüdingworth von 1988 e.V. 13 (2001) 75–8. 10 Rolf Gramatzki, ‘Bemalte Kirchendecken’, in Grote, Rolf-Jürgen/Königfeld, Peter (ed.), Raumkunst in Niedersachsen. Die Farbigkeit historischer Innenröume. Kunstgeschichte und Wohnkultur (München: Deutscher Kunstverlag, 1991), 170; Hinrich Gerkens, Chronik des

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Old Testament and the arms of the peasants, always of both the husband and his wife (presumably the owners of the houses and farms); there are over one hundred of them. The medallions are surrounded by scrollwork and grotesque ornaments, as was fashionable in that period.

Historical background: duke versus peasant community In 1518, the archbishop of Bremen conquered the neighbouring Land, Wursten, and then headed for Hadeln. With the support of the Saxon dukes, Hadeln was defended against the Bremen threat. The first thing that the estates of Hadeln did after the war ended was introduce the Reformation. The first Lutheran sermons had already been preached in Otterndorf in 1521. On 2 July 1526, the Lutheran church order for Land Hadeln was decreed,11 and the first visitation effected. Hadeln became Protestant before the Duchy of Saxe-Lauenburg itself. In 1585, Duke Franz II of Saxe-Lauenburg tried to gain more influence and extend his power by introducing the Saxe-Lauenburger church order. The clergy and the estates of Hadeln protested. It took two years to settle the conflict: the Hadelner church order of 1526 remained untouched and was held valid.12 In the years around 1610/20, trouble arose between the duke and the parish communities of Hadeln. It seems that some communities had arbitrarily dismissed parsons and employed new ones without any examination and without seeking the duke’s approval.13 In 1621, this became known in Lauenburg. The duke objected, and insisted that his jus episcopale was rated higher than the jus patronatus. Hadeln yet again rejected any interference on the part of the duke. Rumours circulated saying that the duke wanted to deprive the community of their patronage altogether. The quarrels ended with an agreement between Duke August and the Hadeln estates in 1523, which more or less acknowledged the Kirchspiels Lüdingworth. 700 Jahre Lüdingworth 1298–1998 (Cuxhaven-Lüdingworth: Selbstverlag, 2000), 38. 11 Full text in Emil Sehling, Die evangelischen Kirchenordnungen des XVI. Jahrhunderts (5 vols.; Leipzig: Reisland, 1902–13), vol. 5 Livland – Estland – Kurland – Mecklenburg – Freie Reichsstadt Lübeck mit Landgebiet und Gemeinschaftsamt Bergedorf – Das Herzogtum Lauenburg mit dem Lande Hadeln – Hamburg mit Randgebiet (1913), 460–7; Ernst Spangenberg (ed.), Corpus Privilegiorum et Constitutionum Terrae Hadeleriae oder Sammlung der für das Land Hadeln ertheilten und ergangenen Privilegien, Verordnungen und Ausschreiben. Sammlung der Verordnungen und Ausschreiben, welche für sämmtliche Provinzen des Hannoverschen Staats, jedoch was den Calenbergischen, Lüneburgischen, Bremen- und Verdenschen Theil betrifft, seit dem Schlusse der in denselben vorhandenen Gesetzessammlungen bis zur Zeit der feindlichen Usurpation ergangen sind. Theil 4, Abtheilung 3: die Hadelnschen Verordnungen bis 1739 enthaltend (Hannover, 1823), 10–31. 12 Sehling, Die evangelischen Kirchenordnungen, 463; Chronik des Landes Hadeln, 178. 13 Chronik des Landes Hadeln, 257–62.

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same procedure as before: the parish community elected and presented the preacher, the candidate underwent an examination with the visitors and the duke confirmed the nomination.14 Assuming the year 1620 to be correct, the painted ceiling with the peasant arms in Lüdingworth must date precisely from that time. Personally, I am very much inclined to suspect that this is no coincidence since the general mood was undoubtedly in favour of emphasising the patronage rights and status. These rights and status were maintained throughout the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Nearly all the pieces in the furnishing of the church also show coats of arms and inscriptions with the names of local citizens. The pulpit (fig. 74–5), dating from the early seventeenth century with later refurbishments, shows scenes from the New Testament reassuming the history of salvation carved in relief. Beneath each picture there is a coat of arms, held by two angels, and below this a frame bearing the name of the donator. The same applies to most of the other pieces of furniture in the church, such the gallery on either side of the organ, the lectern, the boxes, the rood screen, the multistorey lid of the baptismal font, two paintings of Luther and Melanchthon and the stairs leading up to the pulpit. Even the late medieval statue of Jacobus Maior, the apostle, in the corner next to the pulpit, has an inscription that says who paid for fresh paint in 1739. The only piece without any visible coats of arms is the altar, dated 1665: however, a list is preserved with the names of about one hundred donators who contributed to it. Such a large number of family crests would never have fitted onto one surface, which is probably the reason why they were omitted completely. The one hundred families may well, in any case, have involved more or less the whole parish community. The rails on both sides of the altar, which served as kneelers during holy communion (fig. 76), have their inscription, however: ‘Godt zu ehren der kirchen zu[m] Ziradt, Hey Ayeke undt Seine Frawe haben dises verehret’ (‘To the honour of the Lord and the embellishment of the church, Hey Ayeke and his wife have donated this’). Having the names, crests or even portraits of donators on artworks in churches is, needless to say, in no way unusual. Nevertheless, here we have a different story. The sheer number and presence of these arms and inscriptions goes far beyond what is customary and is overwhelming. As patrons, the members of the community were obliged to pay for the maintenance and furnishing of their church; they were thus not merely voluntary donators. The majestic organ in the western gallery was originally a much smaller instrument, built by Antonius Wilde in 1598. Eight decades later the community wanted to have it enlarged, and for this task they hired the best master organ 14 Cf. Spangenberg (ed.), Corpus Privilegiorum.

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builder of their time in the whole of northern Germany, Arp Schnitger, who completed the extension in 1682. Large parts of the work are original and this magnificent instrument contributes greatly to the fame of the church. As was common in Protestant churches, each member of the community had a seat assigned to him/her which was indicated with his or her name. However, here the name plates also go beyond what is normal, with large painted family crests (fig. 77). A separate box in the corner of the chancel belonged, according to the inscription, to the Schultheiß, the mayor of the village Lüdingworth. Three leading families even had themselves built a row of boxes in the gallery along the northern wall of the nave in 1774 (fig. 78). The front is richly decorated with carved and painted ornaments. The box is divided into three chambers, each crowned with the arms and names of the owners. The three epitaphs on the southern wall of the nave (fig. 79), the quality of which would befit any city church, also recall members of important local families.

Conclusion A case such as this proves how well the principles of ‘representation’ and their symbolic language were understood even far beyond court circles or government offices. Inside the church, the coats of arms of the local peasant families occupy every imaginable spot, whereas there is no trace of the ducal government. The reason for this is obvious: the patronage of this church was held by the people of Lüdingworth themselves. The peasants of Land Hadeln were well aware of their extraordinary position within the Holy Roman Empire. To express their privileges, their status and their ambition, they used the very same symbols and media as princes, state authorities and noble patrons did elsewhere. Lüdingworth is the best preserved of the churches in Hadeln, most of the others having undergone significant changes in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. However, peasants’ arms appear in other churches, too, for example in Ilienworth and Altenbruch. A more profound, comparative analysis of the churches of Hadeln and of their socio-historical background is called-for and should be rewarding.

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Bibliography Chronik des Landes Hadeln: nebst interessanten Auszügen aus der Geschichte der Aemter Ritzebüttel, Bederkesa und Neuhaus, des Landes Wursten und des Landes Kehdingen (Otterndorf, 1843). Ellwardt, Kathrin, ‘Die Sitzordnung in der Weilburger Schloß- und Stadtkirche in der ersten Hälfte des 18. Jahrhunderts’, Jahrbuch der Hessischen Kirchengeschichtlichen Vereinigung 47 (1996) 41–66. Ellwardt, Kathrin, Evangelischer Kirchenbau in Deutschland (Petersberg: Michael Imhof Verlag, 2008). Gerkens, Hinrich, Chronik des Kirchspiels Lüdingworth. 700 Jahre Lüdingworth 1298–1998 (Cuxhaven-Lüdingworth: Selbstverlag, 2000). Gramatzki, Rolf, ‘Bemalte Kirchendecken’, in Grote, Rolf-Jürgen/Königfeld, Peter (ed.), Raumkunst in Niedersachsen. Die Farbigkeit historischer Innenröume. Kunstgeschichte und Wohnkultur (München: Deutscher Kunstverlag, 1991) 157–218. Kiessling, Gotthar, Der Herrschaftsstand. Aspekte repräsentativer Gestaltung im evangelischen Kirchenbau (München: Scaneg, 1995). Kuhle, Gertrud, ‘Die ständische Selbstverwaltung im Lande Hadeln’, De Worth. Schriftenreihe des Geschichts- und Heimatvereins Lüdingworth von 1988 e.V. 9 (1997) 16–46. Raschzok, Klaus, Lutherischer Kirchenbau und Kirchenraum im Zeitalter des Absolutismus. Dargestellt am Beispiel des Markgraftums Brandenburg-Ansbach 1672–1791 (Frankfurt a.M./Bern/New York/Paris: Peter Lang, 1988). Rathjen, Jörg, ‘Die geteilte Einheit: Schleswig-Holstein zwischen König und Herzog 1490–1721’, in Witt, Jann M./Vosgerau, Heiko (ed.), Geschichte Schleswig-Holsteins (Heide: Boyens, 2010) 139–76. Rohde, Uta, Die Schloßkapelle in Eisenberg/Thüringen (MA thesis; Philipps-Universität Marburg, 1994). Rüther, Heinrich, Geschichte des Landes Hadeln (Otterndorf: J. & R. Hottendorf, 1949). Sehling, Emil, Die evangelischen Kirchenordnungen des XVI. Jahrhunderts (5 vols.; Leipzig: Reisland, 1902–13). Spangenberg, Ernst (ed.), Corpus Privilegiorum et Constitutionum Terrae Hadeleriae oder Sammlung der für das Land Hadeln ertheilten und ergangenen Privilegien, Verordnungen und Ausschreiben. Sammlung der Verordnungen und Ausschreiben, welche für sämmtliche Provinzen des Hannoverschen Staats, jedoch was den Calenbergischen, Lüneburgischen, Bremen- und Verdenschen Theil betrifft, seit dem Schlusse der in denselben vorhandenen Gesetzessammlungen bis zur Zeit der feindlichen Usurpation ergangen sind. Theil 4, Abtheilung 3: die Hadelnschen Verordnungen bis 1739 enthaltend (Hannover, 1823). Weckwerth, Alfred, St Jacobi Cuxhaven-Lüdingworth (Regensburg: Verlag Schnell & Steiner, 1967). Wex, Reinhold, Ordnung und Unfriede. Raumprobleme des protestantischen Kirchenbaus im 17. und 18. Jahrhundert in Deutschland (Marburg: Jonas Verlag, 1984). Wille, Egon, ‘Die Renovierung unserer Jacobi-Kirche. Ein kleiner Blick zurück’, De Worth. Schriftenreihe des Geschichts- und Heimatvereins Lüdingworth von 1988 e.V. 13 (2001) 75–8.

Marta Małkus and Anna Michalska

Jews, Lutherans, Friars Minor: the image of ‘Infidels’ in the depiction of the Trial of Christ from Wschowa (Fraustadt)

Introduction Scholarly research undertaken in recent decades has clearly proven the assertion that in the early modern era visual arts served as a medium for confessionalisation and interconfessional discourse.1 The examples given have usually included highly developed ideological messages, either positive (building up a group’s distinctive confessional identity through emphasising the motifs specific to a particular denomination) or negative (using ridicule, deprecation or the highlighting of mistakes to create an image of the religious opponent). This contribution concerns one painting from the monastery of the Friars Minor of the Observance in Wschowa (Fraustadt) (fig. 80–1). A slight change introduced to the iconography of the Trial of Christ in comparison to its likely visual models, referencing the specific historical and confessional situation of the city, permits us to assume that the painting was intended as polemic against the ‘infidels’ – and what is particularly interesting, against both Jews and Lutherans.

1 With regard to the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth and Silesia, the issue was raised during the National Scientific Conference of the Society of Art Historians ‘Art and Dialogue of the Creeds in the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries’; see, for example, Jan Harasimowicz, ‘Sztuka jako medium nowoz˙ytnych konfesjonalizacji’, in Harasimowicz, Jan (ed.), Sztuka i dialog wyznan´ w XVI i XVII wieku (Warszawa: Stowarzyszenie Historyków Sztuki, 2000) 51–75; Agnieszka Seidel-Grzesin´ska, ‘Sztuka jako płaszczyzna polemiki wyznaniowej w siedemnastowiecznej S´widnicy’, in Harasimowicz (ed.), Sztuka i dialog wyznan´ w XVI i XVII wieku, 294– 306. The case of Wschowa was discussed by Jarosław Jarzewicz, ‘O poz˙ytkach z rywalizacji. Sztuka w s´rodowisku wielowyznaniowym na przykładzie Wschowy’, in Baranowski, Andrzej (ed.), Sztuka pograniczy Rzeczypospolitej w okresie nowoz˙ytnym od XVI do XVIII wieku (Warszawa: Stowarzyszenie Historyków Sztuki, 1998) 133–50.

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The history of Wschowa and its religious denominations Founded in the mid-thirteenth century, Wschowa was at one time one of the most important cities in the Kingdom of Poland. Soon after its foundation, it received the status of a royal city. Royal privileges, as well as its convenient location in western Greater Poland, near the borders of Silesia and on the routes between Bohemia, Lusatia, Saxony and Poland, provided perfect conditions for the development of crafts and trade.2 At the turn of the early modern era the former homogenous religious image of the city started to change. In the fourteenth or (more likely) fifteenth century, Jewish tradesman settled in Wschowa. The community was not numerous and its development was interrupted in 1592, when the city obtained the privilege de non tolerandis judaeis. Jewish settlement moved to nearby villages. Its several attempts to return within the city walls met with the townsmen’s protests. By the mid-sixteenth century, the teaching of Martin Luther had reached the city. The number of its followers among the German-speaking townsmen of Wschowa grew steadily, and soon Lutherans predominated in every aspect of city life. The churches, churchyards and schools were taken over by the city council, which until 1732 consisted solely of Lutherans. During the Thirty Years’ War, Wschowa became famous as the final destination for many religious refugees.3 After the Reformation, the Franciscan monastery remained the only enclave of Catholicism in Wschowa. However, after the church and monastery had burnt down twice, the friars decided in 1562 to leave the devastated buildings and the city.4 Unsurprisingly, the Lutherans were accused of starting both fires.5 2 August G. Braune, Geschichte der Stadt Fraustadt (Fraustadt: L.S. Pucher’s Buchdruckerei, 1889); Hugo Moritz, Reformation und Gegenreformation in Fraustadt (2 vols.; Posen: Merzbach’sche Buchdruckerei, 1907–8); Irena Kubistalowa/Barbara Zabawa, ‘Wschowa, “Civitas Secundi Ordinis”. Mecenat artystyczny mieszczan´stwa od XVI do XVIII w.’, in Harasimowicz, Jan (ed.), Sztuka miasta i mieszczan´stwa XV–XVIII wieku w Europie S´rodkowowschodniej (Warszawa: Stowarzyszenie Historyków Sztuki, 1990) 397–410; Tadeusz Dzwonkowski, Sukiennictwo wschowskie na przełomie XVIII i XIX w. (Wschowa: Muzeum Ziemi Wschowskiej, 2000); Marta Małkus/Kamila Szyman´ska, ‘Ziemia wschowska na pograniczu’, Przegla˛d Zachodni 1 (2012) 213–18; Barbara Ratajewska, Materiały archiwalne do dziejów Wschowy (Leszno: Archiwum Pan´stwowe, 2013). 3 Aleksandra Bek-Koren´/Aleksandra Lipin´ska, ‘Cursu completo. Nagrobki i epitafia ´sla˛skich uchodz´ców religijnych na wybranych przykładach we Wschowie i Lesznie’, in Klint, Paweł/ Małkus, Marta/Szyman´ska, Kamila (ed.), Ziemia wschowska w czasach starosty Hieronima Radomickiego (Wschowa/Leszno: Stowarzyszenie Kultury Ziemi Wschowskiej/Muzeum Okre˛gowe w Lesznie, 2009) 209–23; Tomasz Jaworski, ‘Wpływ wojny trzydziestoletniej na oblicze społeczno-gospodarcze południowej Wielkopolski’, in Klint/Małkus/Szyman´ska (ed.), Ziemia wschowska w czasach starosty Hieronima Radomickiego, 113–30. 4 Pius A. Turban´ski, Kronika Klasztoru Braci Mniejszych Obserwantów czyli Bernardynów we Wschowie 1455–1808 (Wschowa, 1971), 12–13. 5 Alojzy Pan´czak, Historia III Zakonu Franciszkan´skiego (Warszawa/Woz´niki, 2015), 110–13.

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At the beginning of the seventeenth century, on the rising tide of the CounterReformation, the Catholic Church regained some of its former possessions, including the main parish church, cemetery and school. Jan Krzycki, a parish priest in Wschowa and at the same time secretary to the Polish king, also pressed for the reclamation of the former Franciscan monastery.6 These efforts were supported by Catholic nobility from the territory of Wschowa, such as the Opalin´ski, Tarnowiecki and Krzycki families, as well as the district’s governor (Pol. starosta), Hieronim Radomicki, and the papal nuncio, Antonio Santacroce. With King Sigismund III’s consent, Franciscan friars in 1629 returned to the city and signed an agreement with the city council. Thanks to a generous donation by Mikołaj Tarnowiecki, the new Monastery Church of St Joseph was completed in 1644. The church and its main altar, commissioned by Ludwik Krzycki, were consecrated in 1652.7

Building the Catholic identity through art There were some attempts to reconvert the Lutheran townsmen to Catholicism during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Nonetheless, at the close of the latter the number of Catholic parishioners in Wschowa and nearby Przyczyna Górna amounted to only seventy people. Wschowa remained a Lutheran city, with its few Catholics gathering around two churches. However, the protection of the king and noblemen, together with gradually increasing intolerance in the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, encouraged the Catholic minority to assert its presence in the cityscape. The return of the Catholics to the confessional map of Wschowa in 1605 was celebrated during the solemn Corpus Christi procession. It was attended by the governor Wacław Kiełczewski and the local nobility, including Piotr Opalin´ski, along with their courtiers and servants.8 During the eighteenth century, the processions were conducted between the main parish church and the Franciscan monastery. It was only after Wschowa’s main parish church had been reclaimed that there began the real manifestation of Catholic beliefs and the struggle for the souls of 6 Robert Weimann, ‘Receptiones seu installationes ad episcopatum, praelaturas et canonicatus Ecclesiae Cathedralis Posnaniensis ab anno 1532 usque ad annum 1800’, Roczniki Towarzystwa Przyjaciół Nauk Poznan´skiego 35 (1909) 1–167, on 75–6. 7 Turban´ski, Kronika, 213. 8 Moritz, Reformation und Gegenreformation, vol. 2, 23. In the chronicles of the Friars Minor of Wschowa, the first Corpus Christi Procession is mentioned in 1647, see Alojzy Pan´czak, ‘Działalnos´c rekatolizacyjna wschowskich bernardynów’, in Klint/Małkus/Szyman´ska (ed.), Ziemia wschowska w czasach starosty Hieronima Radomickiego, 313–35, on 323.

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its townsmen. Artistic monuments, constructing a religious topography for the city, were one of the most powerful tools in this aim. They exhibited the most controversial principles of Catholic faith; for example, the real presence of Christ in the Eucharist was emphasised by placing a sanctuary lamp outside the chancel of the monastery church. At the same time, most of the Bible verses placed upon these objects were quoted in both Latin and German, to prove the deep bond with biblical tradition and to make their messages clear for the German-speaking townsmen. As for the Franciscan friars, the most lucid proof of their return to the cityscape was their new church. Its bare brick walls, buttresses and traceries clearly recall the gothic architectural tradition. Those elements might be seen simply as the choice of the architect, Krzysztof Bonadura the Elder. However, they could also have been intended to indicate the long-lasting Catholic tradition of Wschowa, just as with Jesuit churches in Protestant territories of Germany.9 Reclaimed bricks – which according to local tradition had been partially blackened by fire – may have been used to recall the old accusation against the Protestants of arson. A similarly distinct confessional character was imposed on the church interiors, whether through altars, paintings, banners, liturgical textiles, candles – often commissioned by newly founded religious brotherhoods – or sepulchral monuments. They were meant primarily to strengthen the religious identity of the Catholic minority. In the interior of the main parish church, the motifs of St Peter and the image of Virgin Mary, representing Ecclesia, were applied. In the Monastery Church of St Joseph, the entire vault was covered with paintings depicting the Holy Family as the Created Trinity, the ideal imitation of the Holy Trinity.10 An interesting example of the struggle for the cityscape can be found in Wschowa’s main parish church. In the veduta (fig. 82), painted after 1742, the depiction of a Lutheran church, Kripplein Christi, was omitted. Lutherans were literally removed from the religious topography of the city; symbolically, the former unified community, civitas christiana, was restored.

9 Jeffrey C. Smith, Sensuous Worship: Jesuits and the Art of the Early Catholic Reformation in Germany (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2002), 59. 10 Magdalena Witwin´ska, ‘Polichromia dwóch Trójc w kos´ciele p.w. s´w. Józefa we Wschowie’, Ochrona Zabytków 3 (1999) 264–79.

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The depiction of the Trial of Christ in Wschowa A similar slight but meaningful change was made in the depiction of the Trial of Christ. The painting, over three metres high and six wide, covers the southern wall of the chancel. Its origins were not mentioned either in the monastic chronicles or in later inventories. Analysis of the artistic style, ornaments and script permits the assumption that it was painted in the same period as the aforementioned main altar, in the mid-seventeenth century. Both paintings were presumably conceived by an artist from the circle of Artus Wolffort. The painting depicts the trial of Jesus before the Jewish high council (Sanhedrin) and Pontius Pilate, Roman prefect of Judaea. Both the general composition and Latin inscriptions were evidently taken from paintings and printed drawings in texts, discovered in the sixteenth century, which allegedly contained the words of Pilate’s sentence. Among the presumable sources of inspiration one may name the engraving by Adriaen Collaert and its prototype, a painting by Marten de Vos, as well as engravings by Francesco Bertelli (fig. 83) and Egbert van Panderen, the latter based on the painted composition of Frans Francken in Saint-Omer.11 The influence of the painting by Łukasz Pore˛bski in the Corpus Christi Church in Kraków (1626) cannot be discounted, either.12 Christ, depicted as stripped of his garments, bound and wearing the crown of thorns, was placed on the right-hand side of the composition, across from the table from where his sentence is being recorded. Above the court clerk sits Pilate, on the high chair. In between Christ and the Roman governor, the Jewish high priest Caiaphas appears in full ceremonial garments. Other figures surrounding 11 The iconographic motif of the Trial of Christ has been thoroughly researched by Romana Rupiewicz. See her ‘Pierwowzory graficzne wizerunku “Sa˛du nad Chrystusem” z kos´cioła Boz˙ego Ciała w Krakowie’, in Moisan-Jabłon´ska, Krystyna/Ponin´ska, Katarzyna (ed.), Inspiracje grafika˛ europejska˛ w sztuce polskiej. Czasy nowoz˙ytne (Warszawa: Wydawnictwo Uniwersytetu Kardynała Stefana Wyszyn´skiego, 2010) 57–78; ‘Obraz Iudicium contra Christum ze skarbca bazyliki mariackiej w Krakowie w s´wietle odkryc´ domniemanych wyroków Piłata’, in Moisan-Jabłon´ska, Krystyna, W kre˛gu sztuki polskiej i grafiki europejskiej (Warszawa: Wydawnictwo Uniwersytetu Kardynała Stefana Wyszyn´skiego, 2011) 11–38; ‘Sensacyjne odkrycie wyroku Piłata w XVI stuleciu. Jego z´ródła i oddziaływanie’, in De˛bin´ski, Antoni/Wójcik, Monika (ed.), Apud Patres. Prawo rzymskie w literaturze wczesnochrzes´cijan´skiej (Lublin: Wydawnictwo Katolickiego Uniwersytetu Lubelskiego, 2012) 133–58; ‘Se˛dziowie Jezusa w wizerunkach Concilium et sententia a perfidis Iudeis in Iesum Nazarenum Redemptorem Mundi w ´swietle przekazu ewangelicznego’, in Mazurczak, Urszula M. (ed.), Studia Anthropologica. Pogranicza historii sztuki i kultury (2 vols.; Lublin: Wydawnictwo Katolickiego Uniwersytetu Lubelskiego, 2013–17) vol. 1 (2013), 85–123; ‘Between the Image and the Word: Research Methods Employed to Analyse Images of Judicium Sanguinarium Judaeorum contra Jesum Christum Salvatorem Mundi’, IKON. Journal of Iconographic Studies 7 (2014) 275–89. 12 Anioł Wilczkowski, guardian in Wschowa since 1638, had previously held the same office in the monastery in Kraków, see Turban´ski, Kronika, 53, 207.

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Christ and the writing desk represent members of the Jewish high council; each holds a cartouche with an inscription giving his name and words of accusation. In the background, in the top right-hand side, just above Christ’s head, a window provides a view of a cityscape and crowd gathering before the praetorium. The crowd demands crucifixion. The inscription above their heads states: ‘Si dismiseris huc homine (sic) non eris amicus Caesaris. Crucifige, crucifige. Sanguis eius super nos et super filios nostros’ (‘If you release this man, you are not Caesar’s friend. Crucify, crucify. His blood upon us and upon our children’).13 The fact that this topic was chosen for the decoration of a Franciscan monastery comes as no surprise since the mystery of Christ’s human existence, from his Incarnation to Passion, is the very centre of Franciscan spirituality. But the Trial of Christ was also treated as an anti-Jewish motif. The aforementioned prints and paintings were often entitled Iudicium sanguinarium Judaeorum (‘The bloody sentence of the Jews’). According to Romana Rupiewicz,14 in many compositions the window or span showing the Jewish crowd is intentionally placed just above Christ’s head. This, and the emphasised role of the Jewish high council members during the trial, served to prove the Jewish people’s guilt of deicide. Throughout the whole early modern period, this deicide remained the most important accusation launched against the Jews.15 Franciscans played a part in that emphasis16 – just one example is the fiery preaching of Giovanni da Capestrano – arousing zealousness as well as anti-Jewish sentiments. Jews were accused not only of causing Christ’s death but also of repeating that act symbolically by torturing the consecrated host, identified by Catholics with Christ’s body. The profanation of the host was mentioned twice in the chronicles of Wschowa’s Franciscan monastery. But why speculate that those accusations also encompassed Wschowa’s Protestant majority? A closer look at the half-length figures of the crowd reveals that they are deprived of features denoting their ‘Jewishness’ (fig. 81). While members of the Sanhedrin sport facial hair, voluminous headgears and rich oriental or antique-style clothes, the people behind the window look completely different, with their beardless faces and dark clothes juxtaposed with white collars or ruffs. In contrast to the engravings, the Roman soldiers are also 13 All the quotations were translated into English by Anna Michalska. 14 Rupiewicz, ‘Se˛dziowie Jezusa’, 120f. 15 Robert Kas´ków, Zainteresowanie Z˙ydami i kultura˛ z˙ydowska˛ w XVI i na pocza˛tku XVII w. w Polsce (PhD thesis; Uniwersytet Wrocławski, 1996), 361; Leon Poliakov, The History of AntiSemitism: From the Time of Christ to the Court Jews (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2003), 20f. 16 Jeremy Cohen, The Friars and the Jews. The Evolution of Medieval Anti-Judaism (Ithaca, NY/ London: Cornell University Press, 1982).

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missing, even though the architecture behind the crowd precisely follows its engraved and painted antecedents. A suspicion arises that the particular selection of these details in the painting is not a coincidence; in this case, the crowd could represent nothing other than the Lutheran townsmen of Wschowa. In the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, the Catholic religious writings of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries frequently described both Jews and Lutherans as ‘infidels’ and ‘heretics’.17 It was common for polemics against both those groups to flow from the pens of the same writers.18 Jews and Lutherans were believed to belong to ‘Satan’s followers’, enemies of the true Christian Church. Some authors, such as Marcin Kromer, Piotr Skarga and Marcin S´miglecki, carried the criticism even further, recognising the Protestants as much more dangerous than Jews, Muslims or heathens. Kromer wrote: Look how cunning and able Satan can be […]. At first he tried to wipe out the Christian faith by the hands of Jews and heathens, through persecution and murders. When it went wrong, […] he engaged the heretics to sow the seeds of error among the Christians under the pretence of God’s word.19

The accusations of profaning the host were also turned against Protestants, as the bleeding host was seen as proof that communion under both kinds was not essential. Moreover, such ideas were reflected in preaching. Between 1539 and 1541, the Franciscan friar Klemens of Radymno pointed out that one of the many sins committed by the citizens of Poznan´ (Posen) was their rejection of the true faith, through acceptance of the ‘mistakes of Lutherans’ and fraternising with Jews. After the Council of Trent, the aversion to ‘infidels’ in the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth started to grow. That trend increased in the early seventeenth century because of the deteriorating economic situation. A careful reading of the polemical writings may convince us that the same patterns were used to deprecate different groups of the so-called infidels. Both Jews and Protestants were accused of misinterpreting the Bible, profaning the objects and places of worship, such as the host and church buildings, and working against the Catholic community by starting fires and poisoning wells. 17 The attitude towards Jews in Polish Renaissance writings presented in this article was researched by Robert Kas´ków (Zainteresowanie Z˙ydami). 18 E. g. Jakub Górski or Hieronim Balin´ski, both active in the late sixteenth century (Kas´ków, Zainteresowanie Z˙ydami, 82). 19 ‘Patrz, jaka to Chytros´c´ a usiłowanie czarta […]. Z przodku starał sie˛ o to jawnie przez z˙ydy i pogany wszelakim przes´ladowaniem i morderstwem krzes´cijanow, aby wiare˛ krzes´cijan´ska˛ zniszczył. Gdy mu to nie poszło, […] zacza˛ł rozmaite a przeciwne błedy mie˛dzy krzes´cijany siac´ przez kacerze pod postawa˛ słowa Boz˙ego’, in Marcin Kromer, Marcina Kromera Rozmowy Dworzanina z Mnichem (1551–4), edited by Łos´, Jan (Kraków: Wydawnictwo Akademii Umieje˛tnos´ci, 1915), 61.

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All these motifs also came to light in Wschowa. The chronicle of the Franciscan monastery mentioned earlier includes two stories about consecrated hosts stolen and sold to the Jews. Although the first profanation was supposed to have taken place in 1462, both events were described as directly connected to the Reformation. According to the chroniclers, the first one was supposed to be ‘[…] a warning to the faithless citizens and a forewarning of the sect of Luther, which was about to break out’.20 In 1557 the host was allegedly sold to the Jews by Lutherans – to be precise, by the minister Andreas Knobloch, responsible for introducing the Reformation to Wschowa. Friar Fabian Orzeszkowski, guardian of the monastery, commented on the situation in a sermon delivered in German for the townsmen who had gathered, as the chronicler noticed, ‘not because of their piety, but because of curiosity’.21 Orzeszkowski said: Your minister, the depraver of devout souls, Andreas Knobloch, calls us Franciscan friars the worst blaggards – but we are all noble men, properly endowed for God’s service, not by the prince of darkness as he is. He was not ordained by any ecclesiatical office, but insinuated himself into the service of the altar and into preaching sermons. He is like a wolf, worse than Judas the Traitor himself, because he took Christ from the Tabernacle and sold him to the Jews for a fur coat.22

Later Lutherans were accused of desecrating the church building since the ruined Corpus Christi Church was turned into a slaughterhouse, and of committing offences against the cross. For the Catholic community of Wschowa in the seventeenth century, Jews were no longer considered a principal threat to confessional identity. This is why the translation of the anti-Jewish motifs into anti-Protestant ones, such as the accusation of profaning the host, might have been employed. Moreover, such a transition was not restricted either to the lands of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth or to Catholic religious writings. In seventeenth-century England, for example, the former anti-Jewish motifs were used by the established church to discredit the Puritan movement.23 However, it is curious that in Wschowa the 20 ‘[…] przestroga˛ dla niewiernych obywateli i ostrzez˙eniem przed nowa sekta˛ Lutra, która wkrótce miała wybuchna˛c´’ (Turban´ski, Kronika, 5). 21 ‘nie tyle z poboz˙nos´ci, co z ciekawos´ci’ (ibid., 9). 22 ‘Wasz predykant, gorszyciel dusz poboz˙nych, Andreas Knobloch, nazywa nas zakonników najgorszymi hultajami, a przeciez˙ wszyscy jestes´my me˛z˙ami szlachetnymi, odpowiednio upowaz˙nieni do słuz˙by boz˙ej nie przez ksie˛cia ciemnos´ci jak on, nie wys´wie˛cony przez z˙aden urza˛d Kos´cioła, ale gwałtem sie˛ wcisna˛ł do słuz˙by ołtarza i głoszenia kazan´ jak wilk, gorszy od samego Judasza zdrajcy, bo zabrał Chrystusa z tabernakulum i sprzedał Z˙ydom za futro’ (ibid.). 23 Brett D. Hirsch, ‘From Jew to Puritan: The Emblematic Owl in Early English Culture’, in Hirsch, Brett D./Wortham, Christopher (ed.), This Earthly Stage. World and Stage in Late Medieval and Early Modern England (Turnhout: Brepols, 2010), available at https:// hcommons.org/deposits/item/hc:10797/ [1. 10. 2018].

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accusations traditionally reserved for the Jewish minority were applied to the Lutheran majority.

Conclusion In the mid-seventeenth century, the religious identity of the Wschowa Catholics had been built upon distinguishing their self-image from that of the infidel religious opponent, the latter strongly affected by the image of the Jew formed during the Middle Ages, as a stranger, infidel and outsider.24 In this context, the unjustly condemned Christ as the image of the oppressed community and suffering body of the Church, and the hostile crowd as the representation of its religious opponent, must had been thought sufficiently meaningful to strengthen the community’s religious identity and prevent its members from converting. As a means to achieving this, the friars or their patrons merged the images of the ancient and modern ‘infidel’ through various accusations, explaining events from times past recorded in monastery chronicles, and also – if the hypothesis of this paper is confirmed – by commissioning a distinctive piece of art.

Bibliography Bek-Koren´, Aleksandra/Lipin´ska, Aleksandra, ‘Cursu completo. Nagrobki i epitafia s´la˛skich uchodz´ców religijnych na wybranych przykładach we Wschowie i Lesznie’, in Klint, Paweł/Małkus, Marta/Szyman´ska, Kamila (ed.), Ziemia wschowska w czasach starosty Hieronima Radomickiego (Wschowa/Leszno: Stowarzyszenie Kultury Ziemi Wschowskiej/Muzeum Okre˛gowe w Lesznie, 2009) 209–23. Braune, August G., Geschichte der Stadt Fraustadt (Fraustadt: L.S. Pucher’s Buchdruckerei, 1889). Cała, Alina, The Image of the Jew in Polish Folk Culture (Jerusalem: The Hebrew University Magnes Press, 1995). Cohen, Jeremy, The Friars and the Jews. The Evolution of Medieval Anti-Judaism (Ithaca, NY/London: Cornell University Press, 1982). Dzwonkowski, Tadeusz, Sukiennictwo wschowskie na przełomie XVIII i XIX w. (Wschowa: Muzeum Ziemi Wschowskiej, 2000). Harasimowicz, Jan, ‘Sztuka jako medium nowoz˙ytnych konfesjonalizacji’, in Harasimowicz, Jan (ed.), Sztuka i dialog wyznan´ w XVI i XVII wieku (Warszawa: Stowarzyszenie Historyków Sztuki, 2000) 51–75.

24 Alina Cała, The Image of the Jew in Polish Folk Culture (Jerusalem: The Hebrew University Magnes Press, 1995), 17.

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Heppner, Aaron/Herzberg, Isaak, Aus Vergangenheit und Gegenwart der Juden und der jüdischen Gemeinden in den Posener Landen nach gedruckten und ungedruckten Quellen (Koschmin/Bromberg: Selbstverlag, 1909). Hirsch, Brett D., ‘From Jew to Puritan: The Emblematic Owl in Early English Culture’, in Hirsch, Brett D./Wortham, Christopher (ed.), This Earthly Stage. World and Stage in Late Medieval and Early Modern England (Turnhout: Brepols, 2010), available at https:// hcommons.org/deposits/item/hc:10797/ [1. 10. 2018]. Jarzewicz, Jarosław, ‘O poz˙ytkach z rywalizacji. Sztuka w s´rodowisku wielowyznaniowym na przykładzie Wschowy’, in Baranowski, Andrzej (ed.), Sztuka pograniczy Rzeczypospolitej w okresie nowoz˙ytnym od XVI do XVIII wieku (Warszawa: Stowarzyszenie Historyków Sztuki, 1998) 133–50. Jaworski, Tomasz, ‘Wpływ wojny trzydziestoletniej na oblicze społeczno-gospodarcze południowej Wielkopolski’, in Klint, Paweł/Małkus, Marta/Szyman´ska, Kamila (ed.), Ziemia wschowska w czasach starosty Hieronima Radomickiego (Wschowa/Leszno: Stowarzyszenie Kultury Ziemi Wschowskiej/Muzeum Okre˛gowe w Lesznie, 2009) 113–30. Kas´ków, Robert, Zainteresowanie Z˙ydami i kultura˛ z˙ydowska˛ w XVI i na pocza˛tku XVII w. w Polsce (PhD thesis; Uniwersytet Wrocławski, 1996). Kromer, Marcin, Marcina Kromera Rozmowy Dworzanina z Mnichem (1551–4), edited by Łos´, Jan (Kraków: Wydawnictwo Akademii Umieje˛tnos´ci, 1915). Kubistalowa, Irena/Zabawa, Barbara, ‘Wschowa, “Civitas Secundi Ordinis”. Mecenat artystyczny mieszczan´stwa od XVI do XVIII w.’, in Harasimowicz, Jan (ed.), Sztuka miasta i mieszczan´stwa XV–XVIII wieku w Europie S´rodkowowschodniej (Warszawa: Stowarzyszenie Historyków Sztuki, 1990) 397–410. Małkus, Marta/Szyman´ska, Kamila, ‘Ziemia wschowska na pograniczu’, Przegla˛d Zachodni 1 (2012) 213–18. Moritz, Hugo, Reformation und Gegenreformation in Fraustadt (2 vols.; Posen: Merzbach’sche Buchdruckerei, 1907–8). Pan´czak, Alojzy, ‘Działalnos´c rekatolizacyjna wschowskich bernardynów’, in Klint, Paweł/ Małkus, Marta/Szyman´ska, Kamila (ed.), Ziemia wschowska w czasach starosty Hieronima Radomickiego (Wschowa/Leszno: Stowarzyszenie Kultury Ziemi Wschowskiej/ Muzeum Okre˛gowe w Lesznie, 2009) 313–35. Pan´czak, Alojzy, Historia III Zakonu Franciszkan´skiego (Warszawa/Woz´niki, 2015). Poliakov, Leon, The History of Anti-Semitism: From the Time of Christ to the Court Jews (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2003). Ratajewska, Barbara, Materiały archiwalne do dziejów Wschowy (Leszno: Archiwum Pan´stwowe, 2013). Rupiewicz, Romana, ‘Pierwowzory graficzne wizerunku “Sa˛du nad Chrystusem” z kos´cioła Boz˙ego Ciała w Krakowie’, in Moisan-Jabłon´ska, Krystyna/Ponin´ska, Katarzyna (ed.), Inspiracje grafika˛ europejska˛ w sztuce polskiej. Czasy nowoz˙ytne (Warszawa: Wydawnictwo Uniwersytetu Kardynała Stefana Wyszyn´skiego, 2010) 57–78. Rupiewicz, Romana, ‘Obraz Iudicium contra Christum ze skarbca bazyliki mariackiej w Krakowie w s´wietle odkryc´ domniemanych wyroków Piłata’, in Moisan-Jabłon´ska, Krystyna, W kre˛gu sztuki polskiej i grafiki europejskiej (Warszawa: Wydawnictwo Uniwersytetu Kardynała Stefana Wyszyn´skiego, 2011) 11–38. Rupiewicz, Romana, ‘Sensacyjne odkrycie wyroku Piłata w XVI stuleciu. Jego z´ródła i oddziaływanie’, in De˛bin´ski, Antoni/Wójcik, Monika (ed.), Apud Patres. Prawo

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rzymskie w literaturze wczesnochrzes´cijan´skiej (Lublin: Wydawnictwo Katolickiego Uniwersytetu Lubelskiego, 2012) 133–58. Rupiewicz, Romana, ‘Se˛dziowie Jezusa w wizerunkach Concilium et sententia a perfidis Iudeis in Iesum Nazarenum Redemptorem Mundi w s´wietle przekazu ewangelicznego’, in Mazurczak, Urszula M. (ed.), Studia Anthropologica. Pogranicza historii sztuki i kultury (2 vols.; Lublin: Wydawnictwo Katolickiego Uniwersytetu Lubelskiego, 2013– 17) vol. 1 (2013), 85–123. Rupiewicz, Romana, ‘Between the Image and the Word: Research Methods Employed to Analyse Images of Judicium Sanguinarium Judaeorum contra Jesum Christum Salvatorem Mundi’, IKON. Journal of Iconographic Studies 7 (2014) 275–89. Seidel-Grzesin´ska, Agnieszka, ‘Sztuka jako płaszczyzna polemiki wyznaniowej w siedemnastowiecznej S´widnicy’, in Harasimowicz, Jan (ed.), Sztuka i dialog wyznan´ w XVI i XVII wieku (Warszawa: Stowarzyszenie Historyków Sztuki, 2000) 294–306. Smith, Jeffrey C., Sensuous Worship: Jesuits and the Art of the Early Catholic Reformation in Germany (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2002). Turban´ski, Pius A., Kronika Klasztoru Braci Mniejszych Obserwantów czyli Bernardynów we Wschowie 1455–1808 (Wschowa, 1971). Typescript after the original Archivium Conventus Vschovensis FF Minorum Observantium, now in the Benedictine monastery in Poznan´. Weimann, Robert, ‘Receptiones seu installationes ad episcopatum, praelaturas et canonicatus Ecclesiae Cathedralis Posnaniensis ab anno 1532 usque ad annum 1800’, Roczniki Towarzystwa Przyjaciół Nauk Poznan´skiego 35 (1909) 1–167. Witwin´ska, Magdalena, ‘Polichromia dwóch Trójc w kos´ciele p.w. ´sw. Józefa we Wschowie’, Ochrona Zabytków 3 (1999) 264–79.

Rainer Kobe

Konfessionalismus im Bild: Der Kupferstich „Der Papst im Lateran“ von Jan van Londerseel nach einem Gemälde von Hendrick Aerts1

Der undatierte Kupferstich Der Papst im Lateran des Niederländers Jan van Londerseel2 ist in der Kunstgeschichte vor allem deswegen so bekannt, weil er für mehr als vierzig verschiedene Kircheninterieurgemälde des 17. Jahrhunderts das architektonische Vorbild lieferte.3 Seit Hans Jantzens Untersuchung von 1910 Das niederländische Architekturbild stand weniger der Stich selbst als vielmehr dessen gemaltes, bis heute unbekannt gebliebenes Vorbild im Mittelpunkt der kunstgeschichtlichen Betrachtung.4 Immer wieder wurde versucht herauszufinden, wie das Vorbild ausgesehen haben mochte und nur nebenbei gingen die Kunstgeschichtler dabei auf die Frage ein, was der Stich als eigenes Kunstwerk aussagt. In dieser Untersuchung steht der Stich und dessen Bildinhalt im Zentrum und erst in zweiter Linie wird das mögliche malerische Vorbild betrachtet. Es wird sich zeigen, dass Londerseels Der Papst im Lateran, im Gegensatz zu seinem gemalten Vorbild, sehr viel mit dem Konfessionalismus und mit der konfessionspolitischen Lage um die Wende des 16. zum 17. Jahrhundert in den Niederlanden zu tun hat.

1 Ich danke Professor Dr Andreas Tacke, Trier, für die Gelegenheit, meine Überlegungen zum Londerseel-Stich in seinem kunsthistorischen Kolloquium vorzustellen und zu diskutieren sowie für die weiterführende Kritik und Ratschläge, die ich dort erhielt. 2 Hollstein XI, 1955, 101, Nr. 75. 3 Nach Schreiner, Ein Gemälde von Hendrick Arts, 872 lassen sich ca. 25 Gemälde auf die „gotische Prachtarchitektur“ des Londerseel-Stiches zurückführen. Maillet, Intérieurs d’églises 1580–1720 La Peinture Architecturale des Écoles du Nord führt um die fünfzig Kopie-Gemälde auf, s. ibid., Catalogue, M–0001 bis M–0054. Über eines dieser Nachahmungsgemälde – Salomons Traum des Danziger Malers Isaac von den Blocke aus dessen neunteiligem Deckengemälde im Germanischen Nationalmuseum in Nürnberg (Inv. Nr. Gm 1193) – lernte ich den Londerseel-Stich kennen, s. Kobe, Eine Deutung des Danziger Deckengemäldes von Isaac von den Blocke im Germanischen Nationalmuseum in Nürnberg, 35ff. 4 Jantzen, Das niederländische Architekturbild, 53–57.

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Der Stich und was darauf zu sehen ist Ausgaben des Londerseel-Stiches sind in den graphischen Sammlungen des Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam, der Albertina in Wien und des Germanischen Nationalmuseums in Nürnberg zu finden. Der Stich hat eine für Graphiken dieser Art gängige Größe von 30,4 cm (Höhe) auf 41 cm (Breite), also etwa DIN A3-Format. Ausgangspunkt und Grundlage dieses Aufsatzes ist der Druck aus der Wiener Albertina,5 dem das Blatt im Germanischen Nationalmuseum6 entspricht (fig. 84). Bisher griff man in der Literatur zu H. Aerts Kircheninterieur im LonderseelStich7 ausschließlich auf die im Hollstein-Katalog ebenfalls aufgeführte, dem Bild nach vollkommen gleiche, aber mit einem kleinen schriftlichen Zusatz versehene Ausgabe des Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam zurück.8 Dem Wiener Blatt fehlt im Gegensatz zum Amsterdamer Druck die Aufschrift „C.I. Visscher excudit“. Das bedeutet: Erst nachdem bereits einige der ursprünglichen Londerseel-Blätter ohne das „Excudit“ gedruckt und in den Umlauf gebracht worden waren, erwarb der bekannte Amsterdamer Kunsthändler und Verleger Claesz Janszoon Visscher (1587–1652) die Druckplatte, versah sie mit seinem Herausgeberzeichen und verkaufte sie so weiter. Dass es nicht umgekehrt war und eine auf der Ursprungsplatte vorhandene Verlegerinschrift nachträglich entfernt wurde, wie es in der Geschichte der Druckplatten immer wieder vorkam, zeigt der Unterschied im Schriftbild zwischen den Inschriften von „Inventor“ und „Sculptor“ einerseits und der des Verlegerzeichens C.I. Visscher excudit andererseits (fig. 85). Wenn die Amsterdamer die ursprüngliche Fassung des Stiches gewesen wäre, würden alle drei Inschriften vom selben Stecher und damit in gleicher Art geschrieben worden sein. Da das nicht der Fall ist und außerdem die Verlegerinschrift von ihrer Lage – unterhalb des Bildes, rechts außen neben der lateinischen Bildunterschrift – im Verhältnis zu den beiden anderen Inschriften aus dem Rahmen fällt, ist sicher, dass das C.I. Visscher excudit nachträglich auf die Druckplatte aufgebracht und damit die Ausgaben des Druckes aus Wien und Nürnberg die älteren sind.

5 Albertina, HB 85.2, fol. 22,23. Die Abbildung bei Hollstein XI, 1955, 101, Nr. 75 I. zeigt die Albertina-Ausgabe mit dem Vermerk: “1st state“. 6 Germanisches Nationalmuseum, Inv. Nr. K 1328. 7 S. u.a. Jantzen, Das niederländische Architekturbild, 53, Daniels, Kerkgeschiedenis en politiek in het perspectief van Hendrick Aerts, 64, Schreiner, Ein Gemälde von Hendrick Aerts: Die Phantasiekirche, 872, Vermet, Hendrick Aerts, 108f, Maillet, Intérieurs d’églises 1580–1720 La Peinture Architecturale des Écoles du Nord, 96. 8 S. Hollstein XI, 1955, 101, Nr. 75 II., abgebildet in Daniels, Kerkgeschiedenis en politiek in het perspectief van Hendrick Aerts, 64.

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Ein solcher Schluss entzieht Ludwig Schreiners Annahme, der Amsterdamer Verleger wäre der Auftraggeber für den Stich gewesen und hätte damit auch den Inhalt des Bildes bestimmt,9 die Grundlage. „Auftraggeber“ war kein anderer als der Stecher selbst, der sich auf der Graphik mit seinem Jan Londerseel Scul[p]tor vorstellt und dem Betrachter gleichzeitig mitteilt, dass ein Hendrick Aerts der Inuentor, d. h. der „Erfinder“ des auf dem Stich wiedergegebenen Bildes sei (fig. 86). „Der Kupferstecher Jan van Londerseel stammte aus Antwerpen, wo er 1578 geboren wurde. Er wirkte nach 1600 in Rotterdam und Delft und starb vor 1625 in Rotterdam.10 79 Stiche, meist Landschaften und biblische Themen, sind von ihm bekannt.11 Der Papst im Lateran ist seine einzige Graphik mit einem Kircheninterieur, sie entstand irgendwann zwischen 160312 und 1620, wahrscheinlich vor 1610. Der Stich (fig. 84) zeigt das Innere eines dreischiffigen, basilikalen, gotischen Kirchenbaus mit der für die Vredeman de Vries-Schule so typischen „Tunneldurchsicht“ in die Tiefe des Langhauses. Der im Mittelgrund sichtbare, an dieser Stelle ungewöhnlich situierte, mit zwei großen flachbogigen, torartigen Durchlässen versehene Lettner trennt das Langhaus von der die ganze Kirchenbreite einnehmenden Vorhalle, deren rechter Teil neben dem Lettner ein Emporenaufbau füllt. Das Licht fällt, wie man an der im Schatten knienden Figur im Vordergrund sieht, von rechts ein. Außer einem Taufstein und den um ihn herum in den Boden eingelegten Grabplatten ist die Kirche mit Marien-, Heiligen- und Bischofs-Figuren ausgestattet. Über dem linken Eingang zur Vorhalle steht ein Heiliger Laurentius mit seinem Rost, auf dem Lettner-Balkon in einem von gotischem Zierrat geschmückten Tabernakel eine von zwei nicht identifizierbaren Figuren eingerahmte Mutter Gottes mit dem Kind auf dem rechten Arm. Unterhalb des Balkons mit seiner Uhr ist auf der Lettner-Mittelsäule der Heilige Andreas mit vor die Brust gehaltenem Gabelkreuz zu sehen. Im Mittelschiff vor der Vierung hängt ein Triumphkreuz, dahinter steht in dem erhöhten Chor der in seinen Einzelheiten nicht erkennbare Hochaltar. Im rechten Bildteil, am Treppenaufgang zur Empore, befindet sich ein in die Wand eingelassener Rundbogen mit dem Relief einer Einzelfigur, wahrscheinlich ein Epitaph. Auf der Empore ist eine aufwendige Grabanlage mit einem liegenden Bischof installiert. Als eigener Bauteil mit einer großen Außentreppe mit

9 10 11 12

Schreiner, Ein Gemälde von Hendrick Aerts: Die Phantasiekirche, 874. Y. Bleyerveld, Johannes Londerseel, in AKL 85 (2015), 225f. Hollstein XI, 1955, 100ff. Der Stich kann nicht vor 1603 entstanden sein, da dieses Jahr als Todesjahr von H. Aerts auf dem Stich vermerkt ist, s. Anm. 43.

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Podest und nach der Monumentalität der Anlage könnte es sich um ein Papstgrab handeln. An dem rechten Vorhallenpfeiler steht auf einem Postament und unter einem Baldachin eine Bischofsfigur mit erhobener linker Hand. Über dem rechten Eingang der Vorhalle ist die Halbfigur einer Mutter Gottes auf der Mondsichel mit dem Kind auf dem linken Arm zu sehen. Am Pfeiler neben dem rechten Portal hängt ein mit Helmzier geschmückter Totenschild. In der Seitenkapelle unter der Empore stehen drei nicht identifizierbare Heilige auf einem geöffneten Flügelaltar. Dies alles, mit seiner liturgisch bestimmten Architektur und seiner Ausstattung sowie dem Fehlen der für evangelische Kirchenräume typischen Kanzel, weist die Kirche als ganz und gar katholisch aus. Wenn auch die beiden bischöflichen Denkmäler sowie die Anwesenheit des Papstes in der Kirche und schließlich der Titel des Stiches suggerieren, es wäre ein Bild der mittelalterlichen Papstkirche San Giovanni in Laterano vor deren barockisierendem Umbau von um 1650 von Francesco Borromini, so ist dies doch nicht der Fall. Die alte Laterankirche war im Gegensatz zur Kirche auf dem Stich fünfschiffig, und das Heiligenprogramm der abgebildeten Kirche enthält keinen für eine San Giovanni geweihte Kirche unerlässlichen Johannes den Täufer. Eine nach den tatsächlichen Gegebenheiten gezeichnete Laterankirche kann es auch deswegen nicht sein, weil diese nach Westen gerichtet ist, die Kirche auf dem Stich aber nach Osten, wie der Schatteneinfall von rechts (Süden) ausweist. Es handelt sich um einen nach der Phantasie gezeichneten katholischen Kirchenraum, der nach Bildinhalt und -unterschrift das Innere der päpstlichen Laterankirche darstellen soll. Diese war, und blieb auch nach dem Umzug der Päpste in den Vatikan (Ende 14. Jh.), die eigentliche Kathedrale des Bischofs von Rom mit dem offiziellen Titel Omnium Urbis et Orbis Ecclesiarum Mater et Caput (Mutter und Haupt aller Kirchen der Stadt und des Erdkreises). Bis in die Frühe Neuzeit verband man mit dem Lateran den Anspruch des Bischofs von Rom auf Vorrang (Primat) gegenüber den anderen Patriarchen und seine auf Kaiser Konstantin zurückgeführte weltliche Machtstellung, wie sie durch die als gefälscht bekannte Konstantinische Schenkung dokumentiert ist.13 San Giovanni in Laterano blieb bis in die Neuzeit ein zentraler Ort des päpstlichen Zeremoniells mit dem „Possess des Laterans“ bei der Einführung jedes neuen Papstes und mit der päpstlichen Fronleichnamsprozession.14 13 Fuhrmann, Das Constitutum Constantini (Constantinische Schenkung) Text, 80 (§11)–95 (§18). 14 Nersinger, Liturgien und Zeremonien am Päpstlichen Hof, 315–45 u. 455–68.

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Mit der Abbildung des Papstes im Lateran schwang immer diese besondere, das ganze Mittelalter hindurch anerkannte Bedeutung mit. Umso mehr fällt das zweimalige Ins-Bild-Setzen des Papstes in seiner Bischofskirche auf dem Londerseel-Stich ins Auge. Links im Mittelgrund ist er unter dem Lettner in einer Prozession mit anderen Geistlichen und päpstlichem Personal unter einem Baldachin, eine Monstranz tragend, zu sehen. Der Zug geht durch das Mittelschiff zum Hochaltar. Das zweite Mal kniet der Papst im Vordergrund rechts in der Vorhalle mit dem über die Schulter gelegten päpstlichen Kreuzstab und zum Gebet oder zur Anrufung erhobenen Händen, vor sich einen Stapel aufgeschlagener Bücher. Beide Papstszenen sind der um 1567 von Philips Galle gestochenen Graphikserie Von den Aufgaben der drei Stände (Adel, Priester und Bauern) nach Entwürfen von Marten von Heemskerk entnommen.15 Aus dem ersten Blatt der Serie mit dem Titel Der Herr verteilt die Aufgaben an die drei Stände stammt die Szene rechts im Vordergrund mit dem knienden Papst, aus dem zweiten Blatt derselben Serie mit dem Titel Der Papst bei der Erfüllung seiner religiösen Pflichten die Szene im Mittelgrund links, bei der der Papst eine Monstranz tragend unter dem Baldachin zu sehen ist. Während die übrigen Personen wohl reine Staffage sind, hat eine dritte Szene, nämlich die in der Seitenkapelle unter der Empore, für die Aussage des Bildes Bedeutung: Zu sehen ist dort ein Priester, der unterstützt durch einen Messdiener vor dem Altar das Messopfer zelebriert.

Was der Stich erzählt Die zwei Verse lateinischen Textes der Bildunterschrift sagen zu diesen drei Szenen: [1] In Lateranensi Romanus Episcopus a[e]de. Supplicat hinc Triadi mista operante sacris. [2] Inde sacrosancti sub imagine panis Jesum Gestat adorandum. Num sibi Papa Deus? [1] Hier betet der römische Bischof in der Laterankirche zur Dreieinigkeit, während ein Priester die Messe zelebriert. [2] Dort trägt er unter dem Bild des hochheiligen Brotes Jesum, den [eigentlich] anzubetenden. Hält sich denn der Papst für Gott?

15 Veldmann, The New Hollstein. Dutch & Flemish Etchings, Engravings and Woodcuts 1450– 1700, 178f (Nr. 497, 498).

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Der erste und der größere Teil des zweiten Verses beschreiben in Kurzfassung, was in den drei Szenen zu sehen ist. Der erste Vers bezieht sich auf die beiden Szenen mit dem knienden Papst und die Messe in der Kapelle vorne rechts, der zweite auf die Szene im Mittelgrund links mit dem Papst in der Prozession. Die Erklärung des ganzen Bildes steckt im Schlusssatz des zweiten Verses für die Szene mit dem die Monstranz tragenden Papst: „Num sibi papa deus?“ „Hält sich denn der Papst für Gott?“. Die kurze Frage setzt den vorhergehenden Text und auch die dazugehörigen Szenen in ein kritisches Licht. Es ist ins Bild übertragene Papstkritik, wie sie sich in der Folge des 1521 von Lukas Cranach geschaffenen Passional Christi und Antichristi in allen reformatorischen Kreisen in Mitteleuropa ausbreitete. Hier fünf Beispiele: (1) Einen Höhepunkt antipäpstlicher Polemik bildete Martin Luthers, ebenfalls in der Cranach-Werkstatt entstandene, Bildserie Abbildung des Papsttums von 1545.16 Mit dem letzten Bild Adoratur Papa Deus Terrenus (fig. 87) wird der Papst mit dem in die umgekehrte Tiara scheißenden „Gemeinen Mann“ und den zu Diebesschlüsseln veränderten Petruszeichen besonders derb angegangen.17 Dem Papst geschehe mit seiner Krone so, wie er sich gegenüber dem Reich Christi verhielte, schrieb Luther in seinem Vers zu dem Bild. Es ist gut möglich, dass die sonst wenig geläufige Formulierung Papa Deus des „Hält sich denn der Papst für Gott?“ in Londerseels Bildunterschrift auf Luthers Papa Deus Terrenus der Abbildung des Papsttums zurückgeht. (2) Die Reformierten und Calvinisten in Zürich und Genf übernahmen die antipäpstliche Agitation und entwickelten sie weiter. Der spätere Zürcher Kirchenvorsteher und Nachfolger Heinrich Bullingers, Rudolf Gwalther, griff den Papst in der Schrift Der Endtchrist von 154618 als „Antichrist“ scharf und polemisch an. Am Ende des Buches befindet sich der auf eine Zeichnung von Heinrich Vogtherr d.Ä zurückgehende Holzschnitt mit der Darstellung des Antichrist (fig. 88). Der Papst ist dort als gehörnte, mit Tiara geschmückte und mit Hufen und Schwanz versehene Satansgestalt zu sehen, die, das Schwert weltlicher

16 WA 54, 1928, 346–73 mit elf Bildtafeln am Ende des Bandes. 17 WA 54, Bildtafel 11 Adoratur Papa Deus Terrenus. 18 Gwalther [1546]. Der Holzschnitt mit dem Antichrist von Heinrich Vogtherr d.Ä. ist dem Text angehängt. Zur Interpretation des Bildes s. Muller, Heinrich Vogtherr l’Ancien. Un artiste entre Renaissance et Réforme, 336f (Nr. 263). Der Holzschnitt wurde für Gwalthers ungedruckt gebliebenes Gedicht Minotaurus romanus sive Antichristus geschaffen und ist in den vier Endtchrist-Ausgaben von 1546 und auf dem Titelblatt abgedruckt von LAELII CAPI || LVPI CENTO Ver=||gilianus, de uita Monachorum, || quos uulgo Fratres || appellant [s.l.n.d. = Froschauer d. Ä., 1545], Zuschreibung und Datierung gem. Manfred Vischer, Bibliographie der Zürcher Druckschriften des 15. und 16. Jhs., erarbeitet in der Zentralbibliothek Zürich, Baden-Baden, Valentin Koerner, 1991, S. 136, Nr. C 349. Für die detaillierten Angaben in dieser und der folgenden Anmerkung danke ich Herrn Kurt Jakob Rüetschi, Luzern.

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Gewalt schwingend, die Bücher der Heiligen Schrift zerstampft und mit brennender Bannbulle Inquisitionsstrafen androht. Gwalthers knapp hundert Seiten starke antipäpstliche Polemik wurde in viele Sprachen, darunter das Niederländische, übersetzt19 und war in der ganzen reformierten Welt weit verbreitet. (3) Die in der Eidgenossenschaft wie überall sonst im Reich von katholischen und protestantischen Behörden verfolgten Täufer stimmten in den antipäpstlichen Chor der reformatorischen Bewegung ein. In ihrem Lied Ein hübsches Neuw Geistlich Lied, darinnen der Enntchrist gar gruendtlich lauter vnd klar abcontherfeith ist20 übernahmen sie die Position Gwalthers, obwohl der sie wie seine Vorgänger Heinrich Bullinger und Zwingli anfeindete und verfolgen ließ. Die Verfasser des Liedes hinderte das nicht daran, sich auf diesen Rudolf Gwalther zu berufen, wenn sie schrieben, „Christus hett niemandt zwungen, mit gwalt zu seiner lehr, Rudolff walther daets selbs beschreiben wider des Bapsts Secret“.21 (4) Theodor Beza, Mitarbeiter und Nachfolger Calvins in Genf, griff in dem Buch Icones die katholische Kirche und den Papst mit mehreren seiner „Emblemata“ in Wort und Bild an. Anders als Luther und Gwalther in ihren volkssprachlichen Antipapstpamphleten wandte sich Beza mit seinen lateinisch unterlegten Emblemen ausschließlich an den Kreis der Gebildeten. Im Emblem XXVIIII22 (fig. 89) stellte er die katholische Geistlichkeit als sich windendes

19 Die zweifache Übersetzung ins Niederländische (niederländisch und niederländisch-friesisch) zeigt die Bedeutung, die man Gwalthers Antipapst-Schrift in den Niederlanden zuschrieb: (1) Een claer bewijs in vijf Predicatien begrepen vanden rechten ende grooten Antichrist …, [Emden] 1570, (2) Der Antichrist. Eyne korte, klare en(de) eyualdige beweijsung in vijf Predicken begrepen, dz der Paus va(n) Room der recht, wärachtig, groot vnde eygentlich Antichrist sij …, (mit Holzschnitt und Umschrift Die Roomsche, rechte ende ware Antichrist), [Emden, um 1570/74, Druckermarke des P. A. de Zuttere von 1570/74]. 20 Der Zürcher Ausgabe der Confessio des Thomas von Imbroich von nach 1558 (ZB 25.1033b) ist das antipäpstliche Lied Fröhlich so will ich singen, aus christenlicher Pflicht angehängt (ibid., fol. MV–MVIIIv), erwähnt bei Wolkan, Die Lieder der Wiedertäufer Ein Beitrag zur deutschen und niederländischen Litteratur- und Kirchengeschichte, 157f. Die Titelseite des Liedes ist, anders als sein Text, mit dem von Bischöfen und Kardinälen umgebenen, thronenden Papst neutral gehalten. Wahrscheinlich stammt die Darstellung aus einem ganz anderen Zusammenhang und wurde für den Lieddruck lediglich adaptiert. Aus der täuferischen Gemeinschaft der Hutterischen Brüder in Nikolsburg in Mähren ist bekannt, dass 1621 dort in der Schule eine Schrift wider das Papsttum als Lehrbuch verwendet wurde; s. Beck, Die Geschichts-Bücher der Wiedertäufer in Oesterreich – Ungarn, betreffend deren Schicksale in der Schweiz, Salzburg, Ober- und Nieder-Oesterreich, Mähren, Tirol, Böhmen, Süd-Deutschland, Ungarn, Siebenbürgen und Süd-Russland in der Zeit von 1526–1785, 395. Es ist gut möglich, dass es sich dabei um Gwalthers Endtchrist handelte. 21 ZB Zürich 25.1033b, fol. MVII, 11. Strophe des Liedes Fröhlich so will ich singen, aus christenlicher Pflicht. 22 Bèze, Icones, id est Verae Imagines Virorum Doctrina Simul Et Pietate Illustrium […] additis eorundem vitae et operae descriptionibus, quibus adiectae sunt nonnullae picturae quas

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Schlangenknäuel dar, zuoberst die eine Tiara tragende „haubenblähende Oberschlange“. Vom Satan seien sie alle zum Untergang der Welt aus dem Orkus heraufgeschickt worden. Doch am Ende habe Christus sie mit dem „bloßen Schwert des Wortes“ [Eph 6. 17] zerschlagen.23 Zusammen mit Calvins reformatorischer Lehre verbreitete sich in der zweiten Hälfte des 16. Jahrhunderts in den Niederlanden ein konfessioneller, häufig mit politischer, antihabsburgischer Agitation verknüpfter „Antipapismus“. In den von den Spaniern befreiten nördlichen Provinzen, wo die katholische Konfession nur noch als mehr oder weniger geduldete Minderheit fortbestand,24 griff man den Katholizismus als konfessionellen Gegner und Religion der habsburgischen Unterdrücker von den Kanzeln der calvinistischen „Öffentlichkeitskirche“ herab an. Dabei nutzten die antikatholischen Agitatoren neben dem teuflischen Antichrist a la Gwalther die „Hure von Babylon“ und das „siebenköpfige Tier“ aus der Offenbarung des Johannes25 als Bild der Verworfenheit des Papsttums und seines Anhangs.26 (5) Gegen die päpstliche Tyrannei wendet sich die aus den Niederlanden des 16. Jahrhunderts stammende Federzeichnung In thiaram pontificiam tyranidis romanae27 (fig. 90). Sie zeigt die Hure mit der Papstkrone vor der Hintergrundinschrift „Gotteslästerung“ und „Aufstand“ und umgeben von Bischöfen und Kardinälen in Schlangen- und Tiergestalt unter der Umschrift: Progenies viperina (Schlangenbrut). Zu sehen sind die päpstlich-katholischen Gräueltaten, nämlich die Bartholomäusnacht (1572), die sogenannte „spanische Furie von

23

24 25 26

27

emblemata vocant. – [Genève] Apud Ioannem Laonium, Emblema XXVIIII ist tatsächlich das 28. in der Reihe der insgesamt 44 Embleme. Der vollständige Text des Emblems lautet: „Hi colubris colubri, cristas tollente Ceraste, Conferti pariter, sinuosa volumina quorum Dextra secat, gladium caeli quae librat ab arce, Quos signent rogitas? satis et re et nomine notos, Quos Satan, armauit iusti quem numinis ira Terrarum exitio, funesto exciuit ab orco. Ast hominum tandem sortem miseratus acerbam Exerto verbi Christus nunc dissecat ense”, in Übersetzung: „Was fragst du, bedeuten all die Schlangen mit der haubenblähenden Oberschlange auf gleiche Art verflochten, verschlungene Knäuel, durch die die Rechte schneidet, die ein Schwert aus dem Gewölbe des Himmels schwingt? Sattsam bekannte nach Amt und Ruf sind das, die Satan, von des gerechten Gottes Zorn bestallt, aus unheilvollem Orkus zum Untergang der Welt herauf gejagt hat. Endlich aber hat Christus der Menschen hartes Los gedauert. Mit bloßem Schwert des Wortes zerschneidet er jetzt [das Schlangenknäuel]“. Lademacher, Die Niederlande. Politische Kultur zwischen Individualität und Anpassung, 229–34. Apk 17. „Mit großer Regelmäßigkeit und in allen Variationen bekam die reformierte Gemeinde […] die Gefahren der papistischen Götzenverehrung eingetrichtert, die bald als die ‚Hure Babylons’ bald als ‚eine Natter oder Schlange, die uns die Kehle durchbeißen wird’ oder schließlich als ‚eine Krebsgeschwulst’ oder ‚Pest’ bezeichnet wurde“, s. Sande, Niederländische Katholiken – Außenseiter in einer protestantischen Nation? Toleranz und Antipapismus in den Niederlanden im 17. und 18. Jahrhundert, 194f. In thiaram pontificiam, Marten de Vos zugeschrieben ca. 1580, Atlas van Stolk, Rotterdam, Inv. Nr. 343.

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Antwerpen“ (1576) und die Scheiterhaufen der spanischen Inquisition. Im Vordergrund stehen links die waffenlosen, mit vom Kopf gefallenen Kronen und mit Ketten gefesselten katholischen Fürsten, die „Werkzeuge römischer Sklaverei“, ihnen gegenüber rechts die wehrhaften, aufrechten „Verteidiger christlichen Glaubens und christlicher Freiheit“ des evangelischen Lagers.28 In den gezeigten Darstellungen von Luthers Unflätigkeit Adoratur, über Gwalthers Endtchrist und Bezas Papst-Schlange bis zur niederländischen Hure von Babylon polemisierten die Protestanten aus Wittenberg, Zürich, Genf und in den Niederlanden konfessionalistisch sehr grobschlächtig und drastisch. Die Papstkritik in unserem Londerseel-Stich ist ganz anderer Art. Sie kommt sublim daher und beschränkt sich auf dogmatische Kernpunkte. Wenn man die Bildunterschrift wegließe, könnte man die Papstszenen im Londerseel-Stich (s. fig. 84) für so neutral ansehen, wie sie in den HeemskerkVorlagen gemeint waren. Lediglich das zweimalige Ins-Bild-Setzen des Papstes und seine Stellung im Schatten geben der Zweideutigkeit Raum und drücken eine gewisse negative Wertung aus. Erst mit der Bildunterschrift erhält das Ganze seinen vollen antikatholischen Anstrich. Wie in den Heemskerk-Vorlagen wurde im Londerseel-Stich nicht ein bestimmter Papst abgebildet,29 sondern es war das Amt des römischen Pontifex, das angesprochen wurde.30 Ludwig Schreiner, der sich in einem Aufsatz in der Weltkunst von 1980 intensiv mit dem Londerseel-Stich und seinem möglichen gemalten Vorbild auseinandersetzte, bewertete, u. a. wegen seiner ungenauen Übertragung der lateinischen Bildunterschrift,31 die Gesamtaussage des Stiches als positiv. Er war der Meinung, es handelte sich um ein Blatt zum ehrenden Gedenken an den niederländischen Papst Handrian VI. Mit seiner Übersetzung des kleinen Fragesatzes am Ende des zweiten Verses als „Trägt nicht auch Gottvater Jesus?“ entging ihm die konfessionelle Sprengkraft, die der Stich in sich birgt.

28 Zur weiteren Bilderklärung s. Ketters en Papen 1986, 142 u. Tanis/Horst, Images of Discord: A graphic interpretation of the opening decades of the Eighty Years’ War, 103f. 29 Ludwig Schreiner sieht Hadrian VI. (Amtszeit 1522–1523) im Stich abgebildet, s. Schreiner, Ein Gemälde von Hendrick Aerts: Die Phantasiekirche, 873; M. Daniels meint, bei der knienden Figur handele es sich um Papst Sixtus V. (Amtszeit 1585–90), s. Daniels, Kerkgeschiedenis en politiek in het perspectief van Hendrick Aerts, 66ff. 30 Dies entsprach der von Luther geprägten reformatorischen Papstkritik (Papst als Antichrist), bei der es stets um die „Institution des Papsttums“ und nicht um die Person des jeweiligen Amtsinhabers ging, s. Gottfried Seebaß, Antichrist IV, in TRE 3 (1978), 28–43, hier: 29. 31 Schreiner, Ein Gemälde von Hendrick Aerts: Die Phantasiekirche, 873 übersetzt: „[1] In der Lateranskirche kniet hier vorne der Bischof von Rom und betet zu der Heiligen Dreieinigkeit. Als ein Eingeweihter verrichtet er seine Gebetshandlungen. [2] Dort hinten trägt er (der Bischof) in der Gestalt des heiligen Brotes den verehrungswürdigen Jesus. Trägt nicht auch Gott Vater für ihn den Jesus?“.

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In der neueren, niederländisch/flämischen Literatur wurde die Papstkritik der Bildunterschrift zwar richtig erkannt,32 aber man unterließ es, daraus folgerichtig Rückschlüsse auf den Inhalt des ganzen Bildes zu ziehen. Nur in gemeinsamer Betrachtung von Bild und Text, die schon mit dem „Hier“ (Vers [1]) und „Dort“ (Vers [2]) der Bildunterschrift erkennbar eng aufeinander abgestimmt sind, kommt der papstkritische Inhalt zum Ausdruck. In der Szene mit dem Papst in der Prozession (s. fig. 84, im Mittelgrund links) und dem dazugehörigen zweiten Vers der Bildunterschrift liegt der Schlüssel zum Verständnis des gesamten Bildes. Bei dem dargestellten Geschehen mit dem die Monstranz unter einem Baldachin tragenden Papst handelt es sich um eine „Eucharistische- oder Sakraments-Prozession“, bei der die konsekrierte Hostie, als der nach der Transsubstantiation „wahre Leib Christi“ mitgeführt wird. Diese im dreizehnten Jahrhundert zum „Hochfest des Leibes und Blutes Christi“ – Fronleichnam – eingeführte Feierlichkeit ist das wohl am stärksten nach außen wirkende Bild des Katholizismus. Dies umso mehr, wenn der Papst selbst das Hochfest des Corpus Christi im Lateran zelebriert, wie es seit dem Spätmittelalter Brauch war.33 Der Erfinder des Stiches setzte die Verbindung von Papst, Lateran und Fronleichnam als Inbegriff alles Katholischen ganz gezielt ins Bild, um es dann umso klarer in Frage stellen zu können. Durch die Kombination von Bild und Text – Papst mit der Monstranz in Verbindung mit dem zweitem Vers der Bildunterschrift – wird das Dogma von der körperlichen Anwesenheit Christi in der Eucharistie bezweifelt und abgelehnt. Denn nach reformierter Vorstellung sitzt Christus zur Rechten Gottes und kann schon deswegen weder im Brot noch im Wein des Abendmahls körperlich anwesend sein.34 Zu glauben, ein Mensch, und sei es der Papst, könne Christus – in Form der Hostie in der Monstranz – tragen, wäre nichts anderes als Blasphemie: „Hält sich denn der Papst für Gott?“ fragt der Bild- und Texterfinder vorwurfsvoll. Dieses „Num sibi Papa Deus?“ haben die Protestanten aller Richtungen dem obersten Priester der katholischen Kirche immer wieder vorgeworfen. Luther sah im Papst den Antichrist, der sich an Stelle von Christus zum Herrn der Kirche aufspielte.35 Zwingli schrieb in der 17. Schlussrede zur ersten Dispu32 Vermet, Architectuurschilders in Dantzig. Hendrick Aerts en Hans en Paul Vredeman de Vries , 47f: „[1] In de Lateraanse kerk bidt de bisshop van Rome hier tot de Drievuldigheid, terwilj een priester de mis opdraagt. [2] Daarachter draagt hij Jezus onder de gedaante van heilig brood ter anbidding. Denkt de paus soms dat hij God is?“, s.a. niederländische Übersetzung bei Blankert, Museum Bredius. Catalogus van de schilderjen en tekeningen, 39. 33 Nersinger, Liturgien und Zeremonien am Päpstlichen Hof, 435f. 34 Ernst Iserloh, Abendmahl III/3, in TRE 1 (1977), 107–31, hier: 114 (Zwingli), 117 (Calvin). 35 Seebaß, Antichrist (wie Anm. 30), 29: „Indem der Papst seine Autorität über diejenige des Wortes Gottes stellt, macht er sich gegen und an Stelle Christi […] zum Herrscher der Kirche“.

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tation vom 3. Januar 1523 unter der Überschrift Vom bapst: „Das Christus ein einiger ewiger obrester priester ist; daruß ermessen würt, daß, die sich obrest priester ußgeben hand, der eer und gewalt Christi widerstreben, ja verschupfen [verwerfen]“.36 Und für Calvin war der Papst der Antichrist, der versuchte, sich an die Stelle Christi zu setzen, was, wie er sagte, „gottlos und eine Schmähung Christi“ sei.37 In den beiden Vordergrund-Szenen kommt die Kritik am Papst nicht nur im beschreibenden Text, sondern im Bild selbst zum Ausdruck. Wie sonst wäre zu erklären, dass sich der auf den Knien liegende Papst in Gänze im Schatten und damit nach protestantischer Auffassung außerhalb des Lichtes des wahren biblischen Wortes befindet? Ebenfalls im Schatten steht die vom betenden Papst in den Blick genommene Bischofsskulptur am Pfeiler vor ihm, möglicherweise einer seiner heiliggesprochenen Vorgänger. Aus der Sicht eines reformierten Betrachters war das nichts anderes als Bilderanbetung und damit Götzendienst. In der Kapelle unter der Empore zelebriert ein Priester die Messe, ohne dass eine Gemeinde anwesend wäre. Derartige Messen „sine populo“ oder Privatmessen wurden von evangelischer Seite als Verstoß gegen den göttlichen Auftrag der Verkündigung abgelehnt. Was den Stich selbst mitsamt der Bildunterschrift anbelangt, lässt sich bis hier resümieren: – Der in Rotterdam und Delft tätige Kupferstecher Jan van Londerseel fertigte den Stich einschließlich der Bildunterschrift nach 1603, im ersten Viertel des 17. Jahrhunderts. Als Vorlage für die Kirchenarchitektur diente ihm ein sonst unbekanntes Werk des auf dem Stich als Inventor genannten Malers Hendrick Aerts. – Der Amsterdamer Verleger Visscher übernahm, wahrscheinlich nach dem Tode Londerseels ca. 1624, die Kupferstichplatte, ergänzte sie mit seinem Verlegerzeichen und gab den Stich ohne sonstige Veränderungen weiter heraus. – Der Stich, wie ihn Londerseel geschaffen hatte, enthielt eine, auf Bild und Text der Bildunterschrift beruhende, konfessionell-reformiert geprägte Kritik am Papsttum und seiner Lehre vom Abendmahl.

36 Z I: 1905, 460 bzw. Z II: 1908, 103–11. R. Gwalther griff in seinem Endtchist den gleichen Gedanken in dem Abschnitt „Der Bapst gibt sich selbs für Gott uß“ auf, s. Gwalther: [1546], fol. 49v–51v. 37 Calvin, Unterricht in der christlichen Religion. Institutio Christianae Religionis, 780 (IV, 7, 29).

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Wie das von Hendrick Aerts geschaffene Kircheninterieur, das J. Londerseel als Vorlage für den Stich diente, möglicherweise aussah Bis in die 1990er Jahre wusste man von dem als „Inventor“ genannten Maler der Stichvorlage, Hendrick Aerts, so gut wie nichts,38 außer dass es eine Handvoll signierter oder ihm zugesprochener Architekturgemälde mit Nähe zur Vredeman de Vries-Malerei gab.39 1995 konnte der belgische Kunsthistoriker Bernard M. Vermet mithilfe Danziger Unterlagen und der auf dem Londerseel-Stich zu sehenden Grabsteininschrift den Maler identifizieren.40 Der zwischen 1565 und 1575 geborene Hendrick Aerts war als Kind mit seiner Mutter aus Mecheln in den südlichen Niederlanden nach Danzig gezogen, wo sich die Mutter41 wieder verheiratete. Er wuchs in Danzig auf und lernte dort die Malerei, zumindest zeitweise, bei Vater Hans und Sohn Paul Vredeman de Vries, als diese zwischen 1592 und 1596 in Danzig tätig waren. Es spricht vieles dafür, dass, wie Vermet annimmt, Aerts seine Lehrer 1596 nach Prag begleitete.42 Die Vredemans zogen 1598 nach Hamburg und 1601 weiter nach Amsterdam, wo Paul sich als Bürger niederließ und eine Werkstatt führte.43 Nicht auszuschließen ist, dass Aerts 1598, nach dem Wegzug der Vredemans, noch einige Zeit in Prag blieb und dort seine Palastbilder und das Kircheninterieur, das später Londerseel als Vorlage diente, fertig stellte. Aerts starb, wie es auf dem Grabstein des Stiches (s. fig. 86) mit dem „Henderick“ und „Mynen Son in Danzk 1603“ (linker Grabsteinrand) festgehalten ist in Danzig im Januar 1603,44 möglicherweise an der damals dort grassierenden Pest. Wegen der Ungewissheit über sein Geburtsdatum ist nicht klar, ob er etwas unter vierzig oder nicht einmal dreißig Jahre alt geworden ist.

38 ThB II: 1908, 165 (Arts, Hendrick). 39 Sigrid Trauzeddel, Arts, Hendrick, in AKL 5 (1992), 341. 40 Vermet, Hendrick Aerts, 110ff; Vermet, Architectuurschilders in Dantzig. Hendrick Aerts en Hans en Paul Vredeman de Vries, 32–7; Vermet, Hendrick Aerts – a Gdansk Painter, 59ff. 41 H. Aerts Mutter Elisabeth van Egen stammte aus Mecheln und war dreimal verheiratet: (1.) Francois von der Brügge; (2.) Jakob Aerts (aus Mecheln (?), Vater von Hendrick Aerts); (3.) Romboldt von Obbergen (aus aus Mecheln stammender Familie), vgl. Cuny, Danzigs Kunst und Kultur im 16. und 17. Jahrhundert, 34, Vermet, Architectuurschilders in Dantzig. Hendrick Aerts en Hans en Paul Vredeman de Vries, 32–7. 42 B. Vermet hält es für wahrscheinlich, dass H. Aerts der in Dokumenten nicht namentlich erwähnte mitwirkende Maler an dem in Prag entstandenen Gemälde von Paul Vredeman de Vries Palaisexterieur, Wien, Kunsthistorisches Museum, war, s. Vermet, Architectuurschilders in Dantzig. Hendrick Aerts en Hans en Paul Vredeman de Vries, 51ff. 43 Hans Vredeman starb 1609 in Hamburg, Paul um 1617 in Amsterdam, s. Borggrefe, Hans Vredeman de Vries (1526–1609), 30 m. Anm. 119, 121. 44 Vermet, Hendrick Aerts, 111f.

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Sein bekanntes Oeuvre umfasst lediglich sieben Gemälde. Alle entstanden in den drei Jahren zwischen 1600 und Ende 1602. Die Tafeln sind nicht sehr groß, sie haben ein Ausmaß zwischen 93x127,5 cm des größten45 und 38x62 cm des kleinsten Gemäldes.46 Wahrscheinlich lagen die Maße des uns interessierenden Gemäldes, das Londerseel als Vorlage diente, irgendwo in der Mitte dieser Angaben mit einer Höhe von nicht über 70 und einer Breite unter 100 cm. Aerts’ Kircheninterieur wird nicht vor 1598, sondern, schon wegen seiner Abhängigkeit von den in Prag gemalten Vredeman de Vries-Bildern,47 zur gleichen Zeit wie seine anderen erhaltenen Gemälde um die Jahrhundertwende entstanden sein. Wie das Gemälde oder eine Zeichnung davon nach Rotterdam und schließlich in die Hände des Stechers Londerseel kam, ist nicht bekannt. Gut vorstellbar ist, dass der ab 1601 in Amsterdam wirkende Paul Vredeman de Vries beim Transfer eine Rolle spielte. Über das Aussehen der Stich-Vorlage gehen die Meinungen auseinander. Eine viel diskutierte Frage ist, ob der Druck das ursprüngliche Bild, wie in der Reproduktionsgraphik des 17. Jahrhunderts üblich,48 seitenverkehrt wiedergibt und ob die beiden Papstszenen und die Bildunterschrift bereits zum Aerts-Gemälde gehörten. Dass der Stich, was L. Schreiner annahm, B. Vermet jedoch verneinte,49 das Gemälde gespiegelt wiedergibt, lässt sich aus Londerseels Druck selbst heraus belegen. Die Bischofsfigur an dem Pfeiler vorn rechts im Bild liefert den Beweis. Der Bischof segnet mit der linken Hand (s. fig. 84). Das ist, wie die Fachleute sagen, ein sicheres Zeichen dafür, dass es sich um die im Herstellungsgang von

45 Allegorie auf Jugend u. Liebe im Rijksmuseum von Amsterdam. 46 Palastinterieur in Kiew (im Krieg verloren gegangen). 47 S. Fusenig/Vermet, Der Einfluss von Hans Vredeman de Vries auf die Malerei, S. 166: „[H. Aerts war] wohl derjenige Maler, der Vredemans Vorbild am genauesten folgte […] Seine Palastansichten sind eng mit den Bildern verwandt, die Hans und Paul in Danzig und anschließend in Prag malten“. Auch das von B. Vermet als Kerkinterieur (früher: „Interieur van een gefantaseerd renaissancepaleis“) bezeichnete, signierte und datierte Aerts-Gemälde von 1600 (s. Vermet, Architectuurschilders in Dantzig. Hendrick Aerts en Hans en Paul Vredeman de Vries, 45, Abb. 14, 49f m. Anm. 48) ist eindeutig eine Weiterführung des Vorbildes von H. Vredeman de Vries von 1594 Dreischiffiger Innenraum (s. Borggrefe, Hans Vredeman de Vries und die Renaissance im Norden [Ausstellungskatalog], 320 bzw. 322, Nr. 163). 48 „Annähernd 95 Prozent der vor 1750 erschienenen Reproduktionsgraphik zeigen ihr Motiv seitenverkehrt“, s. Brakensiek, Gemalte Interpretation – Gemälde nach druckgraphischen Erfindungen. Überlegungen zu einigen medialen Aspekten der Reproduktionsgraphik, 47. 49 Schreiner nimmt an, dass die beiden Papstszenen wie die Bildunterschrift nicht zum ursprünglichen Aerts-Gemälde gehörten und der Druck seitenverkehrt zum Gemälde war, ohne dies näher zu begründen, s. Schreiner, Ein Gemälde von Hendrick Aerts: Die Phantasie, 874ff. Vermet geht davon aus, dass die Papstszenen, nicht jedoch die Bildunterschrift, zum Gemälde gehörten und der Druck die gleiche Seitenrichtung wie das Aerts-Gemälde hat, vgl. Vermet, , Architectuurschilders in Dantzig. Hendrick Aerts en Hans en Paul Vredeman de Vries 49, Anm. 47.

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Druckgraphik unvermeidliche Seitenverkehrung handelt.50 Sie würde nur dann nicht auftreten, wenn der Stecher ein zum Original seitenverkehrtes Bild auf die Platte zeichnete, was einen großen zusätzlichen Arbeitsaufwand bedeutete und wegen der Umständlichkeit des Umsetzens meist unterlassen wurde. Solch seitenverkehrtes Abzeichnen der Vorlage wandte man nur in Ausnahmefällen an und Londerseel hat, wie an der segnenden linken Hand der Bischofsfigur zu sehen ist, darauf verzichtet.51 Das heißt: der uns vorliegende Druck gibt das Original von Aerts seitenverkehrt wieder.52 Das Gemälde von Aerts sah demnach, zumindest in seinem Grundaufbau, so aus wie der gespiegelte Stich ohne die Bildunterschrift (fig. 91) und, wie wir sehen werden, auch ohne die beiden Papstszenen. Der Emporenteil mit der Kapelle befand sich jetzt links und der Lettneraufbau mit dem Durchblick in das Langhaus auf der rechten Bildhälfte. Ein Betrachter kann so in „Leserichtung“ mit der Person im Portal von links ins Bild kommen und sich mit seinem Blick in das Bild und die perspektivische Tiefe des Langhauses hinein begeben. Das Licht fällt jetzt von links ein. Mit den vier verschiedenen, aber doch ähnlichen, auf einer Seite zusammengestellten Bildern von H. Aerts bzw. den Vredemans (fig. 91–4) soll deren inhaltliche und zeitliche Abhängigkeit voneinander demonstriert werden: Links oben der gespiegelte Londerseel- Stich, rechts daneben das Aerts-Gemälde Inneres einer gotischen Kirche aus Braunschweig,53 unten links das Kircheninterieur v. Paul Vredeman de Vries aus Schloss Rohrau54 und unten rechts das als einziges

50 Wenn in der Reproduktionsgraphik bei der Darstellung exponierter Tätigkeiten, die normalerweise mit rechts ausgeführt werden wie Schreiben, Führen eines Geigenbogens oder eines Schwertes und das Segnen, die Linke die ausführende Hand ist, muss davon ausgegangen werden, dass der Druck das Original seitenverkehrt wiedergibt, s. dazu Brakensiek, Gemalte Interpretation – Gemälde nach druckgraphischen Erfindungen. Überlegungen zu einigen medialen Aspekten der Reproduktionsgraphik, 48. 51 Das trifft ebenfalls auf die römischen Ziffern der Uhr am Lettner-Balkon des LonderseelStiches zu. Auch sie sind seitenverkehrt (s. fig. 84) und erst in der gespiegelten Ausgabe des Stiches (s. fig. 91) richtig lesbar. 52 Damit ist ausgeschlossen, dass das 30x41,5 cm kleine, in der Seitenrichtung des LonderseelStiches auf Kupfer gemalte Kircheninterieur mit Papstprozession, das Original des AertsGemäldes (so Daniels, Kerkgeschiedenis en politiek in het perspectief van Hendrick Aerts, 63, 56 [ibid., Abb. 2]), sein könnte, s.a. Vermet, Architectuurschilders in Dantzig. Hendrick Aerts en Hans en Paul Vredeman de Vries, 47, Anm. 44. Bei dem von Daniels erwähnten Bild handelt es sich um eine der vielen nach dem Londerseel-Stich gemalten Kopien. 53 Hendrick Aerts, Inneres einer gotischen Kirche, undatiert, Braunschweig, Herzog AntonUlrich-Museum, Inv. Nr. GG 425. 54 Paul Vredeman de Vries, Kircheninterieur, undatiert, Graf Harrachsche Familiensammlung, Schloß Rohrau bei Wien.

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der vier eindeutig datierte (1594) Gemälde Inneres einer gotischen Kirche von dessen Vater Hans, ehemals Schloss Vöslau.55 Was Aerts Kirchenarchitektur aus dem Londerseel-Stich (oben links) besonders auszeichnet und von früheren Kircheninterieurs der beiden Vredemans und auch von seinem eigenen Braunschweiger Gemälde (oben rechts) unterscheidet, ist die in den Mittelgrund und damit ins Zentrum gerückte Lettner-Anlage. Durch den an dieser Stelle liturgisch-architektonisch „unmöglichen“, als eigenes bauliches Element hervorgehobenen, durch zwei Flachbögen geteilten LettnerDoppelraum wird das Auge des Betrachters in die Tiefe des Langhauses mit dann freiem Blick bis in die vom Hochaltar geschmückte Apsis gelenkt. Daneben fällt die Vielzahl miteinander verbundener, perspektivisch erschlossener Räume des Emporenteils als besondere Bildidee auf. In Paul Vredemans Bild aus der Harrachschen Sammlung (unten links) ist die allgemeine Raumaufteilung ähnlich wie auf dem gespiegelten Londerseel-Stich mit dem Unterschied, dass der Lettner dort steht, wo er liturgisch-architektonisch hingehört: in der Tiefe des Mittelschiffes, in Höhe der Vierung und als Trennung zum Chor. Das Danziger Gemälde von Hans Vredeman von 1594 Inneres einer gotischen Kirche (unten rechts) mit der dem Langhaus vorgelegenen Vorhalle mit Taufstein und Grabplatten (rechts unten) dürfte Aerts Entwurf genauso beeinflusst haben wie dessen (hier nicht abgebildetes) Pietas-Gemälde im Danziger Rathaus von 1594/95.56 Aus der Pietas könnte Aerts die Konzeption des Durchblicks durch eine geteilte Bogenanlage in ein mehrschiffiges Langhaus bis zu dessen Apsis übernommen haben, wie sie sich auf dem Stich am Ende der Vorhalle mit dem Blick durch die beiden Lettner-Bögen auftut. Da die Datierungen sowohl des Londerseeler Aerts-Gemäldes (links oben) als auch des Kircheninterieurs von Paul Vredeman aus der Harrachschen Sammlung (links unten) nicht klar sind, kann man nicht sagen, wer von wem abgemalt hat. Es ist gut möglich, dass P. Vredemans Gemälde während des Prager Aufenthaltes entstand und Aerts darauf aufbauend seine mit dem in den Vordergrund verlegten Lettner noch anspruchsvollere Architektur der Raumvielfalt entwickelte. Dass P. Vredeman für das Gemälde in der Harrachschen Sammlung das Kirchenarchitekturbild von H. Aerts übernahm und es sich bei P. Vredemans Rohrauer Kircheninterieur „um eine seitenverkehrte Adaption des LonderseelStiches nach Hendrik Aerts“ handelt,57 ist schon wegen der Entstehungszeit des 55 Hans Vredeman de Vries, Inneres einer gotischen Kirche, 1594, Privatbesitz. Es ist das älteste bekannte Kircheninterieur des Malers. 56 S. Borggrefe, Hans Vredeman de Vries und die Renaissance im Norden (Ausstellungskatalog), 327, Nr. 168d. 57 So Th. Fusenig u. B. Vermet, s. Fusenig/Vermet, Der Einfluss von Hans Vredeman de Vries auf die Malerei, 177, Anm. 14.

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Stiches,58 aber auch weil in einem solchen Fall P. Vredeman das Bild ohne eigentlichen sachlichen Grund aufwendig seitenverkehrt umgestellt haben müsste und schließlich wegen des Meister-Schüler-Verhältnisses zwischen den Vredemans und H. Aerts,59 unwahrscheinlich. Erst auf den zweiten Blick ist das nach 1700 möglicherweise in Prag entstandene Gemäldekabinett von Johann Michael Bretschneider,60 seit 1974 im städtischen Museum Schloss Rheydt, für uns von Interesse. Bei genauerer Betrachtung entdeckt man auf dem 103x144,5 cm großen Galeriebild unter den 35 kleinen Gemälden auf der illusionistischen Galeriewand das von Aerts gemalte Kircheninterieur in einer Größe von hier etwa 19x25 cm (fig. 95). Anders als bei den an die fünfzig verschiedenen seitengleichen gemalten Kopien des LonderseelStiches handelt es sich bei Bretschneider um eine zum Stich seitenverkehrte Wiedergabe der Kirchenarchitektur. Die eingangs auf dem Londerseel-Stich als katholisch herausgearbeitete Ausstattung der Kirche, einschließlich des Bischofsgrabes auf der Empore und der Bischofsfigur an der Säule fehlt auf Bretschneiders Bild genauso wie die beiden Papstszenen und die in der Kapelle unter der Empore auf dem Loderseelstich zelebrierte Privatmesse. Stattdessen ist die Kirche mit Personen gefüllt, die sich konfessionell nicht direkt zuordnen lassen und, wie die ganze Kirche, eher konfessionsneutral erscheinen. Keiner der bisherigen Betrachter und Interpreten des Londerseel-Stiches, von H. Jantzen bis B. Vermet und zuletzt B. Maillet, ist auf J.M. Bretschneiders frühe Verwendung der Aerts-Architektur eingegangen, wahrscheinlich weil ihnen das Gemälde nicht bekannt war. Alles deutet darauf hin, dass Aerts gotisches Kircheninterieur so aussah, wie J.M. Bretschneider es auf dem kleinen Bild seines Gemäldekabinetts nachmalte (s. fig. 92). Ob Bretschneider, als er um 1700 in Prag arbeitete,61 das AertsGemälde kannte und er die Kirchenarchitektur einfach abmalte, ist ungewiss. Auszuschließen ist jedoch, dass er sein Kircheninterieur umständlich seitenverkehrt nach dem Londerseel-Stich konstruierte, wenn er nicht zumindest annahm, dass das Aerts-Gemälde, welches er wiedergeben wollte, so aussah wie er es auf seinem Rheydter Gemäldekabinett gemalt hat, d. h. seitenverkehrt zum Stich und ohne Papstszenen. 58 Nach 1603, s. Anm. 11 u. Anm. 43. 59 Zur Abhängigkeit der Aerts- von Vredeman-Bildern, s. Anm. 46. 60 Johann Michael Bretschneider, Gemäldekabinett, Mönchengladbach, Städtisches Museum Schloß Rheydt, Inv. Nr. M 32. Zu Johann Michael Brettschneider und dem Rheydter Gemälde s. Weber, Neue Erkenntnisse zu drei Gemälden in Schloß Rheydt; Tacke, Die Gemälde des 17. Jahrhunderts im Germanischen Nationalmuseum. Bestandskatalog, 63–6. 61 Der 1656 in Aussig an der Elbe geborene und 1727 in Wien gestorbene Johann Michael Brettschneider lebte und wirkte 1697–1707 in Prag, s. Weber, Neue Erkenntnisse zu drei Gemälden in Schloß Rheydt, 100f.

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Folgerungen zum Aerts-Gemälde und zur Entstehung des Londerseel-Stiches Auch wenn man es ohne das ursprüngliche Aerts-Gemälde oder seine zeitgenössische Beschreibung nicht endgültig wissen kann, so war der zweimalige Papst samt Bildunterschrift noch nicht bei Aerts zu finden, sondern es sind Ergänzungen des niederländischen Stechers. In Aerts Danzig des ausgehenden 16. Jahrhunderts bestimmten Reformierte und Lutheraner mit ihrer Konkurrenz und ihrem Streit untereinander die aktuellen Themen. Die katholische Konfession spielte in der öffentlichen Diskussion so gut wie keine Rolle. Papst und Vatikan traten, wenn überhaupt, dann als Käufer von Getreide aus dem Weichseldelta in Erscheinung. In den gebildeten Kreisen der Stadt kannte und bewunderte man sie höchstens noch als Kenner und Mäzene der Künste. Nach der schon relativ lange zurückliegenden Einführung und mittlerweile festen Etablierung des Protestantismus gab es keinen Grund für antikatholische Polemik in der Stadt. Ein papstkritisches und dabei dogmatisch-diffiziles Sujet, wie es der Londerseel-Stich mit seiner Bildunterschrift zeigt, ist für das Danziger Umfeld auszuschließen. Genausowenig wie Danzig war die habsburgische Kaiserresidenz Prag, wo das Gemälde, zumindest in seiner Konzeption und im Entwurf, im ausgehenden 16. Jahrhundert vermutlich entstand, ein Platz für dogmatische, antikatholische Kritik in einem für den Kunstmarkt bestimmten Werk. Ganz anders in den Niederlanden. Wie der Spott-Stich eines Unbekannten von 157262 mit den wie ein tanzendes Liebespaar sich in inniger Umarmung umfassenden Unterdrückern der niederländischen Freiheit, dem Papst und Herzog Alba, vor Augen führte, waren dort der politische und der konfessionelle Antipapismus um die Jahrhundertwende aktuell. Die im Londerseel-Stich sichtbare dogmatische Papstkritik passt nicht nach Danzig oder Prag, aber sehr gut in die nördlichen Niederlande, wo sich die Reformierten gegen Ende des 16. Jahrhunderts als die vorrangige Konfessionspartei und als „Öffentlichkeitskirche“ gerade durchzusetzen begannen und von wo aus sie versuchten, ihre Position in den südlichen Niederlanden gegen Spanier und Katholiken zu behaupten. Der niederländische Freiheitskampf gegen die Spanier war eng mit dem von Calvinisten geführten dogmatischen Kampf gegen den Katholizismus und das Papsttum verbunden. Es liegt daher nahe anzunehmen, dass die dem Stich innewohnende Kritik im calvinistisch-antikatholischen Milieu der Niederlande ihren Ursprung hatte. 62 Spotprent op Alva en de katholiecke kerk (1572), Historisch Museum, Stichting Atlas van Stolk, Rotterdam, s. Tanis/Horst, Images of Discord: A graphic interpretation of the opening decades of the Eighty Years’ War, 64–67, hier: 67 (linkes Bild) und dazugehörige Verse, ibid. 66.

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Der dogmatische Antikatholizismus trat in den Hintergrund, als 1609 der Waffenstillstand zwischen den Generalstaaten und den Spaniern zustande kam und als etwa zur gleichen Zeit zwischen Remonstranten und Konterremonstranten die internen Auseinandersetzungen der Reformierten um die Prädestination begannen. Alles weist darauf hin, dass die Papstkritik mit den beiden Papstszenen und der Bildunterschrift nach 1603 aber vor 1609 in den Niederlanden in die Wiedergabe des Aertschen Kircheninterieurs eingefügt wurde. Ob es der Stecher selbst war oder ob es dafür möglicherweise einen des Lateinischen kundigen theologischen Dogmatiker als Ideenfinder und Textschreiber gab, wird kaum noch festzustellen sein. Als Ergebnis der Untersuchung lässt sich zusammenfassen: – Das dem Londerseel-Stich Der Papst im Lateran zu Grunde liegende Gemälde des aus den Niederlanden stammenden, auf dem Stich Inventor genannten Danziger Malers Hendrick Aerts war in seinem Original spiegelbildlich zur Druckfassung. – Das ursprüngliche Gemälde enthielt weder die beiden Papstszenen noch die Bildunterschrift. Es sah in seiner Kirchenarchitektur so aus wie es Johann Michael Bretschneider in dem Kircheninterieur auf seinem Galeriebild wiedergab. – Das von H. Aerts unter dem Einfluss von Hans und Paul Vredeman de Vries um 1600 gemalte Kircheninterieur war nach seiner Ausstattung katholisch, ohne weitere konfessionelle Aussage. Wahrscheinlich entstand das Bild in Prag und war dort in Auftrag gegeben oder für den Verkauf vorgesehen. – Der in Rotterdam und Delft wirkende Kupferstecher Jan van Londerseel schuf den Stich Der Papst im Lateran im ersten Jahrzehnt des 17. Jahrhunderts (durch den Druck seitenverkehrt zum Vorbild) nach dem Aerts-Gemälde, ergänzte es um die beiden Papstszenen und die Bildunterschrift und gab dem Bild damit einen papstkritischen, die katholische Eucharistielehre in Frage stellenden Anstrich. – In den zahlreichen Nachahmungsgemälden wurde die in Bild und Unterschrift ausgedrückte zeit-und ortsgebundene Papstkritik des Londerseel-Stiches nicht übernommen. Von Interesse war einzig die Wiedergabe der AertsArchitektur. Die Nachahmungsgemälde behielten die mit dem Druck vorgegebene Seitenrichtung bei. Der reformierte Konfessionalismus im Londerseel-Stich Der Papst im Lateran ist eine Zutat aus der ersten Dekade des 17. Jahrhunderts, beeinflusst von den konfessionspolitischen Verhältnissen in den Niederlanden. Das Vorbild des Stiches, das Kircheninterieur von Hendrick Aerts, entstand einige Jahre vorher als neutral gehaltenes Bild einer katholischen Kathedrale, deren Architektur im Stich gespiegelt wiedergegeben wird.

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Abkürzungen von Sammelwerken AKL:

Allgemeines Künstlerlexikon, Leipzig: Seemann, München: Saur; Berlin: De Gruyter, 1969ff. Hollstein: Hollstein’s Dutch and Flemish Etchings, Engravings and Woodcuts ca. 1450– 1700, 72 Bände, Amsterdam: Hertzberger, später: Ouderkerk aan den Ijssel: Sound & Vision, 1949–2010. ThB: Allgemeines Lexikon der Bildenden Künstler von der Antike bis zur Gegenwart (Thieme-Becker). 37 Bände, Leipzig: Seemann, 1907–50. TRE: Theologische Realenzyklopädie. 36 Bände, Berlin: De Gruyter, 1977–2004. WA: D. Martin Luthers Werke. 120 Bände, Weimar: Böhlau [e.a.], 1883–2009 (Nachdruck Graz: ADEVA, 1968). Z: Huldreich Zwinglis Sämtliche Werke (Corpus Reformatorum), Berlin: Schwetschke [e.a.] 1905–91 (Nachdruck München: Kraus Reprint, 1981).

Literatur Beck, Josef, Die Geschichts-Bücher der Wiedertäufer in Oesterreich – Ungarn, betreffend deren Schicksale in der Schweiz, Salzburg, Ober- und Nieder-Oesterreich, Mähren, Tirol, Böhmen, Süd-Deutschland, Ungarn, Siebenbürgen und Süd-Russland in der Zeit von 1526–1785. Gesammelt, erläutert und ergänzt durch Josef Beck, Fontes Rerum Austriacarum. Oesterreichische Geschichts-Quellen, Zweite Abteilung, vol. 43 (Wien: C. Gerold’s Sohn, 1883). Bèze, Théodore de: Icones, id est Verae Imagines Virorum Doctrina Simul Et Pietate Illustrium […] additis eorundem vitae et operae descriptionibus, quibus adiectae sunt nonnullae picturae quas emblemata vocant. – [Genève] Apud Ioannem Laonium, 1580 (Exemplar der Universitätsbibliothek Mannheim, Signatur: Sch 053/144, nach: http:// www.uni-mannheim.de/mateo/camenaref/beze.html). Blankert, Albert, Museum Bredius. Catalogus van de schilderjen en tekeningen (1. Auflg. Den Haag 1978) (Zwolle: Wanders Uitgevers, 1991). Borggrefe, Heiner et al. (ed.), Hans Vredeman de Vries und die Renaissance im Norden (Ausstellungskatalog) (München: Hirmer, 2002). Borggrefe, Heiner, Hans Vredeman de Vries (1526–1609), in Heiner Borggrefe et al. (ed.), Hans Vredeman de Vries und die Renaissance im Norden (Ausstellungskatalog) (München: Hirmer, 2002), 15–38. Brakensiek, Stephan, Gemalte Interpretation – Gemälde nach druckgraphischen Erfindungen. Überlegungen zu einigen medialen Aspekten der Reproduktionsgraphik, in Markus A. Castor et al. (ed.), Druckgraphik. Zwischen Reproduktion und Invention, Passagen Bd. 31 (Berlin, München: Deutscher Kunstverlag, 2010), 39–53. Calvin, Jean, Unterricht in der christlichen Religion. Institutio Christianae Religionis, übers. v. Otto Weber (Neukirchen-Vluyn: Neukirchener Verlag, 1988). Cuny, Georg, Danzigs Kunst und Kultur im 16. und 17. Jahrhundert (Frankfurt a.M: Heinrich Keller, 1910).

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Daniels, G.L.M., Kerkgeschiedenis en politiek in het perspectief van Hendrick Aerts, in Antiek 9 (1974), 63–9. Fuhrmann, Horst (ed.), Das Constitutum Constantini (Constantinische Schenkung) Text, Fontes iuris Germanici antiqui in usum scolarum ex Monumentis Germaniae historicis separatim editi X (Hannover: Hannsche Buchhandlung, 1968). Fusenig, Thomas/Vermet, Bernard, Der Einfluss von Hans Vredeman de Vries auf die Malerei, in Heiner Borggrefe et al. (ed.), Hans Vredeman de Vries und die Renaissance im Norden (Ausstellungskatalog) (München: Hirmer, 2002), 161–78. Gwalther, Rudolf, Der Endtchrist. kurtze, klare und einfaltige Bewysung in fünff Predigen begriffen, dass der Papst zuo Rom der rächt, war, gross und eigentlich Endtchrist sye, von welchem die h. Propheten und Apostel gewyssagt und uns gewarnet habend, [Zürich: Christoph Froschauer d.Ä.], 1546 (Exemplar der ZB Zürich Sign. III R 435, nach: e-rara.ch). Jantzen; Hans, Das niederländische Architekturbild (Erstausgabe 1910) (Braunschweig: Klinkhardt & Biermann, 1979). Ketters en papen onder Filips II (1986), ed. Rijksmuseum Het Catharijneconvent Utrecht [‘s-Gravenhage]: Staatsuitg. Kobe, Rainer, Eine Deutung des Danziger Deckengemäldes von Isaac von den Blocke im Germanischen Nationalmuseum in Nürnberg, Porta Aurea 10 (2011), 24–47 u. Farbtafeln I–X. Lademacher, Horst, Die Niederlande. Politische Kultur zwischen Individualität und Anpassung (Berlin: Propyläen, 1993). Maillet, Bernard, Intérieurs d’églises 1580–1720. La Peinture Architecturale des Écoles du Nord (mit Katalog als CD-ROM) (Merksem: Pandora, 2012). Muller, Frank, Heinrich Vogtherr l’Ancien. Un artiste entre Renaissance et Réforme, Wolfenbütteler Forschungen 72 (Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz, 1997). Nersinger; Ulrich, Liturgien und Zeremonien am Päpstlichen Hof, vol. 1 (Bonn: nova & vetera, 2010). Sande, Anton W.F.M. van de, Niederländische Katholiken – Außenseiter in einer protestantischen Nation? Toleranz und Antipapismus in den Niederlanden im 17. und 18. Jahrhundert, in Horst Lademacher et al. (ed.), Ablehnung – Duldung – Anerkennung. Toleranz in den Niederlanden und in Deutschland. Ein historischer und aktueller Vergleich, Studien zur Geschichte und Kultur Nordwesteuropas Bd. 9 (Münster et al.: Waxmann, 2004), 189–201. Schreiner, Ludwig, Ein Gemälde von Hendrick Aerts: Die Phantasiekirche, in Weltkunst 50 (1980), 872–877. Tacke, Andreas, Die Gemälde des 17. Jahrhunderts im Germanischen Nationalmuseum. Bestandskatalog (Mainz: Zabern, 1995). Tanis, James/Horst, Daniel, Images of Discord: A graphic interpretation of the opening decades of the Eighty Years’ War (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1993). Veldmann, Tilja M., The New Hollstein. Dutch & Flemish Etchings, Engravings and Woodcuts 1450–1700. Maarten van Heemskerck Part II (Roosendaal: van Poll, 1991). Vermet, Bernard M., Hendrick Aerts, in Gentse bijdragen tot de kunstgeschiedenis 30 (1995), 107–115. Vermet, Bernard M., Architectuurschilders in Dantzig. Hendrick Aerts en Hans en Paul Vredeman de Vries, in Gentse bijdragen tot de kunstgeschiedenis 31 (1996), 27–57.

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Vermet, Bernard M., Hendrick Aerts – a Gdansk Painter, in Malgorzata RuszkowskaMacur et al. (ed.), Netherlandish Artists in Gdansk in the Time of Hans Vredeman de Vries (Lemgo: Weserrenaissance-Museum Schloß Brake, 2006), 59–63. Weber, Gregor J.M., Neue Erkenntnisse zu drei Gemälden in Schloß Rheydt. I. Johann Michael Bretschneider, „Gemäldekabinett“: Malerei nach graphischer Druckgraphik, in Rheydter Jahrbuch für Geschichte, Kunst und Heimatkunde 20 (1992), 89–122. Wolkan; Rudolf, Die Lieder der Wiedertäufer Ein Beitrag zur deutschen und niederländischen Litteratur- und Kirchengeschichte (Berlin: Behr, 1903 [Nachdruck 1965]).

William Dyrness

Text and media: portraits and representation in Elizabethan England

Introduction In August 1552, the year before the accession of the Catholic Queen Mary in England, John Bale the Protestant pastor and polemicist, was appointed bishop of Ossory in Ireland. At his installation he refused to be vested in cope, crozier, and mitre, and insisted on wearing a black Geneva gown while his scandalised clergy carried his mitre and crozier.1 Bale was also a skilled playwright and, one month into the reign of the Catholic queen, he instinctively understood the role of the theatre in representing cultural tensions, and, he believed, theological fact. I begin with this incident for two related reasons. One is to underline the role that pomp and display played during sixteenth-century Britain. Processions, music and ritual marked the calendars and filled the town squares. As Alexandra Johnston says: ‘Life in early Tudor Britain was one of ceremony and display […] mimetic activities were woven into all aspects of British life’.2 But secondly, Bale’s performance also illustrates a transformation that would come about in the role of drama and theatre between the beginning and the end of that century. Bale himself, following the lead of Thomas Cromwell, was influential in moving specifically dramatic performance out of its traditional setting in church and court, and into peoples’ everyday lives. Bale in particular was skilled in using these forms to attack the papacy and Catholic practices.3

1 Alexandra F. Johnston, ‘Tudor Drama, Theatre and Society’, in Tittler, Robert/Jones, Norman (ed.), A Companion to Tudor Britain (Oxford: Blackwell, 2004) 430–47, on 431. 2 Ibid., 430, 433. 3 Vestments had become contentious during the reign of Edward. A ruling earlier that year had simplified ministerial garb, but instructed bishops to wear a rochet. Even this was too much for Bale, see Peter Marshall, Heretics and Believers: A History of the English Reformation (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2017), 348, 354. Cf. Johnston’s comment: ‘Cromwell and Bale took the dramatic discourse out of the Court and into the public domain’ (Johnston, ‘Tudor Drama’, 435).

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In this paper I wish to explore this movement of drama into the civic life of people, but to place this alongside what seems to be a countermovement: the growing Protestant suspicion of visual imagery. My main entry into these questions will be via a study of Elizabethan portraits, but I want to situate these within the larger backdrop of the mimetic society, or what might be called the symbolic structure of cultural life. Though we have come to see that the transformation from Catholicism to Protestantism was not as sudden or as complete as was previously believed, I think we have not yet understood how those deeply held symbolic structures continued to influence religious believers, albeit in new ways. To arrive at this, I want to make use of categories that come from media studies, in addition to those of historians. As a theologian of culture, and of visual imagery in particular, I have struggled to apply prevailing text-based historical methods to the study of visual artifacts. I have been encouraged by John Elliott’s similar struggle in his enquiries into seventeenth-century Spanish history. He has recently described his discovery of the importance of court art in a monarch’s cultural programme, especially in its attempts to solidify its reputation. Images provide, he thinks, ‘visual affirmation of the reputation to which the regime laid claim through its actions’.4 They reflect the larger symbolic structures of Spanish life. Here is where the categories of media studies prove helpful. Recently, media scholars have sought to go beyond thinking about media as simply the study of technology and communication, and even of the epistemologies these encourage. Lisa Gitelman, for example, thinks that one ought rather to focus, largely if not exclusively, on the job of ‘representation’.5 She finds it helpful to think of media as a kind of scientific instrument of society that one looks through to see what is really there – even if the information cannot easily be separated from the medium.6 This means seeing communication and media as a cultural practice, ‘a socially realized structure of communication’.7 In the case of our study, we might propose that portraits and accompanying protocol are social practices that seek to represent, and to organise, popular perceptions about the monarchy. Moreover, as media they represent a transformation in the way visual images func-

4 John H. Elliott, History in the Making (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2012), 159. See also ibid., 141–5. The weaknesses of using these materials, Elliott thinks, is that it represented a language known only to the elite in its separate world, something that was overcome by the movement out of the court I wish to describe. 5 Lisa Gitelman, Always Already New: Media, History and the Data of Culture (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2008), 4. 6 Ibid., 5. 7 Ibid., 7.

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tioned. These images embody, in Gitelman’s words, the ‘social experience of meaning as a material fact’.8

The portraits of Elizabeth in context Portraits during the Elizabethan period were important both in representing and forming social perceptions. The context in which I wish to place the development of this portraiture is the gradual triumph of Protestantism during the queen’s long reign, and its impact on the arts. The Elizabethan Settlement of 1559, called on the clergy to ‘take away, utterly extinct (sic) and destroy all shrines […] pictures, paintings and all other monuments […] so that there remain no memory of the same in walls, glasses, windows or elsewhere within their churches or houses’.9 This impulse to efface the old imagery increased as the century wore on. In the light of this iconoclastic impulse it might seem strange to focus on portraiture, but I want to argue that it is precisely in the development of these images that a kind of paradox in the Protestant imagination becomes evident. And it is this paradox I wish to track down. Portraits turn out to be extremely important not only to Elizabeth herself but more centrally to the growing claims of the monarchy. During her reign there were portraits of all kinds – Roy Strong counts eighty,10 but that number is probably too small. However, in addition to painted portraits, there were group portraits, miniatures, and woodcuts (probably a couple dozen of each of these). A draft proclamation from 1563 found among state papers, framed to counter the rise of debased images of the queen, specifies that ‘some special person that shall be by hir allowed shall have first fynihsed a portraicture thereof, after which finished, hir Majesty will be content that all other paynters, or grauors…shall and maye at their pleasure follow the sayd patron’.11 Already at this early stage in her reign this proclamation indicates not only that improper images of the queen were circulating, but that these images were in great demand. As the proclamation goes on to say: ‘all sortes of subiectes and people both noble and meane’ wish to have images of the queen to exhibit in their houses.12 But control of the queen’s image proved difficult. England was in a recession, and the queen was a poor patron of the visual arts. She had no personal collection, 8 Ibid., 18. 9 Eamon Duffy, Saints, Sacrilege and Sedition: Religion and Conflict in the Tudor Reformations (London: Bloomsbury Publishing, 2012), 240. 10 Roy Strong, Portraits of Queen Elizabeth (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1963), 5. 11 Ibid. Strong notes there is no evidence that this proclamation was ever put into effect, though he thinks it indicates that pattern drawings did exist. 12 Ibid., 10.

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and, in the early stages of her reign, no official court painter.13 All of this would be consistent with a developing Protestant consensus about the limitations and dangers of visual imagery. There were a number of factors that encouraged an antipathy toward visual display. After the death of Queen Mary, many Protestants, including the artist Nicholas Hilliard, returned from their exile in Geneva, bringing Calvin’s notion of a holy community with them, but also his suspicion of visual imagery. In 1563 John Foxe published his influential Actes and Monuments, in a single folio volume, later expanded into two volumes and widely distributed, which recounted the story of Protestant martyrs under the reign of Queen Mary. In 1571 by action of the bishops of the Church of England, chained volumes of Foxe’s Book of Martyrs were placed in every church in England and did more than any other book to further the notion of England and its people being specially chosen by God – a development that will prove central to the rise of portraiture.14 During the 1570s this tightening of visual display continued. Paul White describes the effect on drama and the visual in the churches: ‘By the 1570s the preaching of the word supplanted any dramatic performance of the word, and older notions of the visual supplementing the oral were falling away’.15 Meanwhile the medieval mystery plays were gradually dying out. The last Corpus Christi play in York was in 1569; in Coventry it stopped abruptly in 1580.16 Patrick Collinson is one of the few to call attention to the paradox in these developments. On the one hand, he notes, all of this represented a kind of secularisation of society. Previously public spaces were filled with religious processions and mystery and saints plays, these were now banished. But, Collinson says, on the other hand, this ‘paradoxically involved the sacralisation of the town, which now became self-consciously a godly commonwealth, its symbolic and mimetic codes replaced by a literally articulated, didactic religious discipline’.17 The memory of a godly commonwealth brought back by the Marian exiles fired their imagination even as it fueled their civic rituals. Accompanying this was a growing aversion to any visual portrayal of religious figures, even of biblical themes. All images were banned from books published in 13 Roy Strong, The English Renaissance Miniature (New York: Thames and Hudson, 1983), 66–7. Cf. Strong’s assessment of the time: ‘Few periods have been more inimical to the visual arts than the middle years of the 16th century’, in Roy Strong, The English Icon: Elizabethan and Jacobean Portraiture (New York: Pantheon, 1969), 1. 14 William Dyrness, Reformed Theology and Visual Culture: The Protestant Imagination from Calvin to Edwards (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004), 90–109. 15 Paul W. White, Theatre and Reformation: Protestantism, Patronage, and Playing in Tudor England (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993), 168. 16 Johnston, ‘Tudor Drama’, 438. 17 Patrick Collinson, The Birthpangs of Protestant England: Religious and Cultural Change in the 16th Century (Houndmills/Basingstoke: MacMillan, 1988), 55.

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Geneva after 1580.18 But here, rather than seeing an effacement of the visual, we should see the emergence of a new visual culture, one now focussing not on the space of the church but on the home and alehouses. While it is true that the links to traditional forms of recreation and display were being cut, as Tessa Watt notes, Protestants transferred their efforts to other forms of printed material: prayer books, psalters, sermons, handbooks of devotion and popular prints.19 This is not to say that people turned their attention from sacred imagery to secular ones – that is to read back modern distinctions between the sacred and secular. For Protestants moving drama and its visual display out of the church and into the larger world served religious purposes. Indeed it represented a new understanding of the way God was at work in the world. It is in this context that I want to examine Elizabethan portraits.

Elizabeth and the rise of the royal image In England, during the reign of Elizabeth, portraiture, as the visual arts generally, was in a state of decline. Hans Holbein had brought the latest Renaissance technique to the court of Henry VIII, but things had gone downhill since then. John Bettes continued Holbein’s manner for a time, and Mary’s court artist Hans Eworth also shows his influence. But during Elizabeth’s reign it was Nicholas Hilliard and, later, George Gower, who carried the tradition forward, even though they never fully understood or appropriated the Renaissance techniques.20 Portraits, of course, had long been important to define the sitter’s place in society, and to record a person’s likeness as they aged. In the case of Elizabeth, they became important as gifts in diplomatic exchanges and, in the 1570s, they 18 Dyrness, Reformed Theology, 123–4. 19 Tessa Watt, Cheap Print and Popular Piety: 1550–1640 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991), 69–70. Collinson sees the restrictions on imagery reaching a climax in 1580, but Watt thinks Collinson overemphasises the ‘visual anorexia’ of English culture during this period, stressing the role of both household and inns and alehouses in the promotion of a new visual culture. Part of the importance of this period may have been captured in a seventeenthcentury history of this period. Camden describes in the annals of the year 1580 the proliferation of priests in England, subject to Rome, who secretly incited rebellion against the queen under the seal of the confessional, seeking ‘to draw the subjects from their allegiance and obedience to their Prince’, see William Camden, The Historie of the Most Renowned and Victorious Princesse Elizabeth, the Late Queen of England (London: Thomas Harper for Benjamin Fisher, 1630), 107. This may account for the antipathy toward any religious imagery on the one hand, associated as it was with Rome, and for the support for the growing display in connection with Elizabeth’s reign. 20 This is Roy Strong’s assessment. Hilliard, he thinks, represented a recovery of an older medieval tradition – he was the last great medieval artist (Strong, The English Renaissance, 135–6).

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played a prominent part in marriage negotiations. But their symbolic and allegorical powers were also recognised and exploited. As Strong notes, ‘lessons of virtue and of vice were to be read from the countenances of the great’.21 Like art in general, portraits were to portray people (and events) not as they were, but as they should be, thus inciting the viewer to worthy thoughts and deeds. And during the latter part of the sixteenth century, the symbolism of portraiture was increasingly pressed into the service of political ambitions. Portraits, like all the arts – state festivals, architectural complexes, even humanist poets, all these were being confiscated by the mechanisms of royal power, to sing the monarch’s praises.22 Frances Yates has argued that this development, especially as reflected in the revival of imperial imagery under Charles V in Germany, provides an important backdrop to the rise of the Elizabethan image.23 Charles had claimed the mantle of Charlemagne, and thus raised – or better revived – the imperial idea and spread it throughout Europe, especially, she thinks, in the symbolism of its propaganda. We have seen that already in the 1560s images of the queen were proliferating, sparking unsuccessful attempts to control their distribution. Clearly the royal image almost from the beginning was deployed both for political and religious reasons, and it would have been available to people from all levels of society. In the 1563 edition of Foxe’s Actes and Monuments, the opening ‘C’ (of Emperor Constantine) features Elizabeth (possibly after a print of Levina Teerlinc) holding a sword in her right hand and her left hand on a globe and the pope under her feet (fig. 96) – the orb of rule, seated on a throne. Elizabeth was the new Constantine who had put a stop to Marian persecutions and restored the true faith. In the 1570 edition the ‘C’ with the same picture becomes the first letter of Christ, which replaces the dedication to Constantine. Frances Yates comments: ‘The initial “C” is thus the climax of the whole book’.24 As heir to the imperial power, Elizabeth can claim the right to throw off papal suzerainty. The earliest allegorical painting of Elizabeth is Queen Elizabeth and the Three Goddesses (1569) (fig. 97). The likely artist of this remake of the judgement of Paris, was a Flemish artist Joris Hoefnagel visiting from the continent, who 21 Strong, English Icon, 46. 22 Roy Strong, Gloriana: The Portraits of Queen Elizabeth (New York: Thames and Hudson, 1987), 10. 23 Frances Yates, Astraea: The Imperial Theme in the Sixteenth Century (London: Routledge, Kegan and Paul, 1975), 1. She admits that the reality of Charles’s rule was largely illusory but its ‘phantom’ nevertheless had a large impact especially on Elizabethan imagery. 24 Ibid., 44. John King thinks the three figures to the left, representing John Foxe, John Day and Thomas Norton, served both to underline her glorious rule and link Elizabeth to the Virgin Empress, recalling the visit of the magi to the Holy Family, see John N. King, Tudor Royal Iconography: Literature and Art in an Age of Religious Crisis (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1989), 155–6.

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brought with him both the imperial allusion and the classical dress in which to present this. To the left is Elizabeth with two of her ladies in waiting, balanced on the right by the three goddesses, Juno, Minerva and Venus embracing Cupid. The verses below explain the defeat of these goddesses by Elizabeth – with their scepter, quiver and shoe (perhaps in respect of the holy ground). Juno points to heaven possibly indicating that the reversal of the traditional judgement has now been decreed by heaven.25 Hoefnagel belonged to a small circle of exiles from the Low Countries who came to England in the 1560s and the picture may have been painted and presented as their expression of gratitude for Elizabeth’s leadership of Protestant Europe and its triumph over Catholic power. The earliest portraits by Nicholas Hilliard (1547–1619) came during 1572–6 when he had completed his apprenticeship with Robert Brandon, the queen’s jeweler, and he became a semi-official court painter (though he did not receive an annuity until the 1590s). One of these early images, the Pelican Portrait by Hilliard (ca. 1572–6) shows the queen already as a stylised icon, featuring a flat expression and elaborate clothes and jewelry (fig. 98). The absence of realism and a natural expression on the face has led scholars to suppose there had been a pattern established which needed to be copied – as time went on the clothes and elaborate jewels became more interesting, and apparently more realistic, than the queen’s face. This suspicion is further supported by the famous Darnley Portrait, painted by Federigo Zuccaro, a visiting Italian Mannerist painter in 1575, surely the most influential portrait of Elizabeth ever painted (fig. 99). Zuccaro brought with him not only a more advanced technique, but also the formula for a sitter that had been perfected by great Italian painters like Titian. This composition would be used later both by Gower and Hilliard. More importantly the face pattern of Zuccaro became the default model throughout the 1580s and even into the 1590s. These years proved to be decisive in the reign of Elizabeth. In 1576 Hilliard left for France in search of patronage that was lacking in Elizabeth’s court, and, as likely, further ‘knowledge’, and settled in the court of the duke of Anjou, in Paris. The duke was not incidentally Elizabeth’s last suitor. While Hilliard was there, these negotiations fell through and it became clear that Elizabeth would never marry. But the collapse of these negotiations represented a new opportunity for the expansion of Elizabethan imagery: she could now become the virgin queen. During her progress through East Anglia in 1578, plays were offered to the queen by Thomas Churchyard, celebrating Elizabeth’s virginity, with lavish references to Diana and the Virgin Mary. This expansion of imagery is represented by an illustration to John Case’s Sphaera civitatis published in 1588 (fig. 100). There the earth is surrounded by 25 Strong, Gloriana, 65–6.

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the Dantean spheres of the moon, sun, planets and fixed stars, and Elizabeth is literally holding the world in her arms. Frances Yates thinks the key to this image is the imperialist argument for one ruler: ‘As the heaven is regulated in all its parts […] by the one first mover who is God, so the world of men is at its best when it is ruled by one prince’.26 Elizabeth then is Virgo-Astraea, the one monarch of this long medieval tradition who rules the world in justice.27 Around this time an engraving of Elizabeth by Francis Delaram (fig. 101), after an image of Hilliard’s, pushes the symbolism further into the religious realm. Here she is seated in glory with a crown of stars around her head, explicitly reclaiming the medieval imagery of the Virgin Mary. The original version of this print was accompanied by verses of Sir John Davies, famous for his hymns to Astraea, the first lines of which, when read downward, spell ELISABETHA REGINA. These lines give some sense of Davies’s intent: E-arly before the day doth spring L-et us awake my Muse, and sing; I-t is no time to slumber, S-o many ioyes this time doth bring, A-s Time will faile to number. B-ut whereto shall we bend our layes? E-uen up to Heauen, againe to raise T-he Mayd, which thence descended; H-ath brought againe the golden days A-nd all the world amended.28

For Davies’s vision of the starry virgin of the golden age returning to earth anticipates Edmund Spenser’s famous Faerie Queene (1590), which can be read on one level as a celebration of the reign of Elizabeth. Yet consistent with the Protestant’s intent to move the dramatic imagery out of the court and into the everyday life of the people, Elizabeth’s annual progress through her realm during this time took on ever more elaborate pomp, and in the process reanimated older medieval traditions. Formerly elaborate feast-days, such as that of Corpus Christi, were celebrated with feasting and bell-ringing, festivities which ardent Protestants despised. However, during this expansion of the idea of monarchy such festivities were reestablished for 17 November, the day 26 Yates, Astraea, 64. 27 In the dedication of his book to Christopher Hatton, Case explains the diagram showing the Prime Mover must be the Prince who represents the Deity. Yates notes how important ‘One’ and ‘unique’ were to Elizabethan symbolism. The Virgin Astraea derives from the fourth eclogue of Virgil that proclaimed the coming of the golden age ruled by the Virgin Astraea, or Justice (Yates, Astraea, 4). 28 Ibid., 69. Yates highlights the strange distance between the crude visual symbolism and the highly accomplished poetic imagery (ibid.).

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of Elizabeth’s Accession, the day she had succeeded her Catholic sister Mary. But now these older Catholic practices became the media of the social fact that Elizabeth represented. The processions and pageants of Accession Day, as Roy Strong says, ‘were thus an adaptation of an old Catholic festival to the ethos of Protestantism’.29 With the defeat of the Spanish Armada in 1588, these state festivals developed to new heights of splendor. Her Accession Day that year was recognised as a special day of thanksgiving for the whole realm. Her procession through the streets of London to St Paul’s, on 24 November, recalled the Roman emperors, as she rode in a symbolic chariot with her imperial crown placed on top. At St Paul’s she heard a sermon – a characteristic element of all Protestant celebrations – praising God for his deliverance from their enemies. This event was celebrated in the Armada Portrait (1588) by Elizabeth’s Serjeant Painter George Gower, based on a new sitting that year (fig. 102). Through openings in the arcade behind her, the great sea victory is recalled: on the left the fire ships are sent into the Armada; on the right Spain’s navy is destroyed by winds on the rocks. Though the portrait was given to Sir Francis Drake in appreciation for his service, the theme is Elizabeth’s triumph, which is pictured as an imperial triumph. Her hand is on the globe, in the fashion of the Roman Emperors, a theme emphasised by the placement, just above, of the crown – closed to indicate the equality of the queen with the Holy Roman emperor.30 This theme reaches something of a climax in the Ditchley Portrait by Marcus Gheeraerts the Younger (1561/2–1635) in 1592 (fig. 103). Gheeraerts, though resident in England, was clearly trained in the Low Countries during the 1580s. Here is the first entrance of what was termed the ‘curious painting’ which allowed for light and shadows, called chiaroscuro, well established on the Continent though unknown to Elizabeth (as to Hilliard). Here reference to Elizabeth’s imperial rule becomes even clearer. Indeed the crown, queen, island, and the globe on which she stands are all one. The first three books of Spenser’s Faerie Queene had just been published and this must have had some influence on Gheeraerts’s symbolism. In Book II, Spenser writes: In widest Ocean she her throne does reare, That over all the earth it may be seene; As the morning Sunne her beans dispredden cleare, And in her face faire peace and mercy doth appeare. […] That men, beholding so great excellence,

29 Roy Strong, The Cult of Elizabeth (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1977), 118. 30 Strong, Gloriana, 131–2. Strong notes that whereas in previous portraits, especially the famous ‘sieve’ portraits, the globe was in the background, it has now been moved to the front.

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And rare perfection in mortalitye, Does her adore with sacred reverence, As th’Idole of her makers great magnificence.31

The literary and the visual tributes of this time were all connected to the larger dramatic presentation of the queen as vestal virgin. The portrait itself, as in fact Spenser’s epic, was influenced by the traditions of festival and chivalry which were being reanimated in the service of the emerging nationalism. Frances Yates calls this process the ‘imaginative re-feudalization’ where ‘the apparatus of chivalry and its religious traditions’ were used to ‘focus religious loyalty on the national monarch’.32 However, here is the paradox I wish underline: at the very point imagery has been banned from churches and even printed books, visual display has been reinstated to its role of representing the truth that was also celebrated in verse – but now the truth is the glory of Elizabeth. Indeed, the literary and civic display and the portraiture are all mobilised in a common system of representation, they are media in Lisa Gitelman’s sense of social practices which reorganise popular perceptions of power within a global order. Elizabeth’s ascension, one is tempted to say, her divinisation, is complete, so that it has become common to so speak of the ‘cult’ of Elizabeth.33 But isn’t this in many ways a strange and historically unexpected development? Patrick Collinson notes how Elizabeth began her life as a modest demure young lady, in the 1550s dressing plainly without ostentatious jewelry – John Bale would surely have been pleased.34 How does it come about that in the 1570s and 80s we find portraits with a symbol of a sieve held in her hand identifying her with the Vestal Virgin Tuccia? How is that her court could become the center of elaborate rituals, such as her daily procession to the Chapel Royal, in which Elizabeth could be seen wearing the dazzling contents of her huge wardrobe. Though the face in her portraits was unchanging, her clothes and jewelry were portrayed in astonishing, and changing, naturalism. In 1596 a decision of the Privy Council ordered Serjeant Painter George Gower to seek out and destroy all unseemly portraits of the queen, which, they said, were ‘to her great offence’. They had decided previously that the official ‘pattern’ image of the queen was to 31 Edmund Spenser, Faerie Queene, ii. xl. 6–9, ii. xli. 6–9, in Strong, Gloriana, 138. 32 Yates, Astraea, 108. See the discussion of the setting of Spenser and the Ditchely Portrait in Yates, Astraea, 104–8. 33 Helen Hackett has questioned how accurate the attribution of a ‘cult’ in a purely religious sense, rightly pointing to Renaissance rhetoric and the older notion of sacred kingship that had been appropriated by Protestants, see Helen Hackett, Virgin Mother, Maiden Queen: Elizabeth I and the Cult of the Virgin Mary (New York: St. Martins Press, 1995), 6–12. 34 Patrick Collinson, ‘Elizabeth I’, in Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (60 vols.; Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004) vol. 14, 96–7.

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be of legendary and ageless beauty.35 Notwithstanding this determination to pursue the policy of royal triumph, the 1590s found the people tired of war, suffering under high taxes and low wages, and a corrupt and quarrelling political system.

The monarchy and Reformation theology But what did those returned exiles from Geneva make of this attempt at constructing a godly commonwealth? Were they willing participants in the festivals that accompanied the queen’s annual progress through her realm? What did the devout Protestant Hilliard make of this? He was certainly the creator of the official image of the queen, if anyone was, the perfect one to recreate a medieval monarchy. Perhaps, Roy Strong thinks, his promotion of Elizabeth as Gloriana was not of his own volition: ‘We are looking at a government promoted portrait’, Strong thinks.36 But in his famous Art of Limning (1598–9) there is no clue that Hilliard had anything but admiration for the queen. Phillip Sidney’s more famous Defence of Poetry (1595) stays clear of politics altogether and avoids even mentioning the queen.37 We must be careful of importing modern prejudices into this period, and approach these panegyrics with caution. On the one hand, the Protestants were not shy about appropriating biblical imagery for the godly ruler – even John Calvin does this.38 As Helen Hackett points out, the Reformers actually worked to ‘enhance the sacred authority of secular rulers by attributing to them the power to protect the true Church and to defend it against papal ambition’.39 In his popular 1571 Catechisme, Protestant Alexander Nowell could praise Elizabeth for ‘announcing [God’s] religion and glory in her dominion and bringing peace to the consciences of her subiectes’.40 Thus, while Protestant theologians were busy constructing long treatises in defence of the Protestant faith and in support of its iconoclasm, they were also anxious to shore up their defence of their Protestant 35 Strong, Gloriana, 20; Strong, English Renaissance, 81–2. 36 Strong, English Renaissance, 118, cf. 92. 37 Though Hackett sees an indirect reference to Elizabethan imagery in Sidney’s reference to the poet’s attempt to describe a person to ‘make their images more lively’, indicating that these panegyrics are not to be taken literally (Hackett, Virgin Mother, 125–6). 38 Hackett notes that even Calvin attributed a spiritual authority to monarchs. In his commentary on Ps 82:1, ‘God has taken his place in the divine council’, Calvin notes: ‘The Prophet calleth the state of Princes by the name of “gods” as in whiche a peculiar maiestie of God shyneth forth […] the name of “gods” is taken for Iudges, in whom God hath imprinted a speciall marke of his glorie’ (quoted in Hackett, Virgin Mother, 21). 39 Hackett, Virgin Mother, 20. 40 Alexander Nowell, Catechisme (London: John Daye, 1571), Aiiii.

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queen. This pursuit of a sacred commonwealth had theological support in Calvin’s notion that creation and our civic life could be a theatre for the glory of God. But the proliferation of civic imagery was occurring just as their suspicion of religious imagery was becoming more pronounced, and this made it necessary for theologians to walk a fine line. Protestant suspicion of imagery in the Church had to sit uneasily with their promotion of royal imagery. Consider an early (1560) catechism of Thomas Becon, a canon in Canterbury Cathedral recently returned from exile. He notes that God spoke to Moses out of the bush. Moses saw no image; he heard a voice, Becon notes. So the Son asks the Father: ‘Is it lawfull in polltyke, civile, worldly matters to have images?’ The Father responds that it is not forbidden, and calls on Christ’s experience with Peter where the Lord asked whose image was on the coin. When Peter responds that it is the Emperor, Becon points out that Christ did not say that such images were wrong. Thus Becon uses this biblical event both to show the utility of images of the sovereign and the way in which honour is to paid both to God and to the State. But the Son asks the obvious follow up question: if ‘in worldly things why not also in divine and holye things?’ The Father responds: ‘In the one, is no pearill, in the other, great danger, as we have learned to much by experience’.41 Around this time, Bishop of Salisbury John Jewel in his controversy with M. Harding (1564) gives the standard Protestant position on images. He praises the ancient emperors for doing away with images, and saw the current Tudor policy as a restoration of this ancient precedent. He did admit to his Catholic interlocutor that images could move the mind and affections, but this was all the more reason to keep them from the churches.42 Jewel takes his stand throughout on the Second Commandment, even as he carefully allowed for the use of civic imagery. Catholic polemicists soon pointed out the inconsistency of this argument. Nicholas Sanders taunted Jewel: ‘Breake if you dare the Image of the Queenes Maiestie, or Armes of the Realme’.43 Thomas Bilson continues Jewel’s pamphlet warfare against Rome in a later work, and reflects a similar dis-ease. In his 1585 argument in defence of the Protestant faith, Bilson tries to clarify how images are dangerous, while some images are allowed. Written in the form of a dialogue between the Catholic Philand and the Protestant Theophil, Bilson appeals to the ancient sources of the True Faith: what part of it is not ancient, he asks? Well, answers Ph., wasn’t the use of images Catholic and ancient? Did not the Council of Nicea declare it so? No, many parts of the Church did not accept this, Th. responds, and the Bishops at 41 Thomas Becon, The Workes of Thomas Becon (London: John Day, 1564), 300. 42 John Jewel, ‘Controversy with M. Harding: Of Adoration of Images’, in Jewel, John, The Works of John Jewel, Bishop of Salisbury, edited by Ayre, John (Cambridge: The Parker Society/ Cambridge University Press, 1845–50) vol. 2 (1847), 644–68. 43 In Strong, Gloriana, 38–9.

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Constantinople condemned their use.44 But, Ph. notes, ‘by worship we do not mean “godly honour”, but simply gestures of outward submission’.45 Th. insists that any honouring, even holding up hands ‘is such honour as [God] hath prohibited to be given to anything made with hands’.46 Ph. again presses the obvious question: ‘For if the images of Princes may be reverenced and idolatrie not committed, much more the image of God’.47 Th. responds that we should not use earthly examples to overturn God’s law: ‘The images of Princes may not be despited (sic) or abused least it be taken as a malicious hart against the Prince, but bowing the knee or lifting up the hand to the image is flat and inevitable idolatrie’.48 That his own answer to this dilemma is unsatisfying even to himself appears in his return to this question a few pages later; after he has discussed, and dismissed, the traditional arguments in support of images, he asks again: What about Princes? The question lingers. Th. addresses it again, arguing, perhaps as much with himself as with the reader: ‘Princes can expect no more than a sober reverence due to their states, expressed by some decent gestures of the body’.49 Likewise with the arms and images. ‘In which case they that honour the Princes’ throne, scepter, seale, swood (sic), token or image, honour not the things which they see, but the power that sent them’. Though this is just about exactly the argument used by iconophils for the religious role of images, Th. insists this in no way justifies the image of Christ. Why not? For Princes, Th. says, we honour in their absence; Christ is always present with his people, he needs no image. Th. concludes with the reminder that ‘you may not build any point of faith upon tradition, except the Scriptures confirm the same’.50 As the representations of the queen became the media of royal power, though Protestants were sometimes ambivalent about its imagery, they were quick to celebrate the deployment of this power. Helen Hackett notes pointedly: ‘The apparatus of state power depended upon much the same use of symbolism and ceremony as did the Church’.51 Elizabeth, for her part, had to be nervous about the widespread (and growing) religious iconoclasm. In 1575, for example, she came into conflict with her second archbishop of Canterbury, Edmund Grindel, over the proliferation of prophesyings, a popular form of biblical exposition and preaching, which were a distant precursor to modern revivals. Elizabeth recog44 Thomas Bilson, The True Difference betweene Christian Subiection and UnChristian Rebellion (Oxford: Joseph Barnes, 1585), 546–7. 45 Ibid., 549. 46 Ibid., 551. 47 Ibid., 552. 48 Ibid. 49 Ibid., 560. 50 Ibid., 578. 51 Hackett, Virgin Mother, 64. Hackett notes recent studies that show that ritual and spectacle make up the very essence of political power.

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nised these rituals as competitive with her progressions, and unsuccessfully urged Grindel to outlaw them. When Grindel responded that he preferred to ‘offend your earthly majesty than offend against the heavenly majesty of God’, Elizabeth suspended him for six months and saw to it that he was marginalised until his death in 1583.52 Still for most Protestants, loyalty to the queen, and the emerging state, had subtly determined how they thought about the visual trappings which spoke of its power. Patrick Collinson notes that in the 1580s power in the Church passed from more progressive bishops to a new generation of bishops that were more comfortable with Elizabeth’s via media, that is to say with the status quo. Archbishop John Whitgift, who followed Grindel, reflected this conservativism and he was more active in suppressing nonconformist Protestants. Elizabeth struggled both against the Papists on the right, and with the Puritans on the left, though her campaigns against the latter were restrained and episodic.53 But there is something larger going on here that transcends the poisonous polemics of that century that I wish to underline. This relates to the larger symbolic structure of the English imagination that I referenced earlier. To approach this, I want to return to the period before the reign of Elizabeth. Thomas Cranmer, the Protestant archbishop and editor of successive versions of the Book of Common Prayer, was famous for his support of the Divine Right of Kings. Since the king was Christ’s vice-regent on earth, Cranmer had come to believe he was necessarily above all earthly restraint. This fact is well known. However, Cranmer’s recent biographer, Diarmaid MacCulloch, has argued that Cranmer’s hatred of the papacy was what came first, his view of divine kingship followed. When the pope’s authority was gone, MacCulloch argues, Cranmer was left with an ‘authority vacuum’ which he filled with veneration for the monarchy.54 This is 52 Susan Doran, Queen Elizabeth I (New York: New York University Press, 2003), 108–9. In his 6,000 word letter to the queen, December 1576, Grindel had the temerity to point out that, in ancient times, bishops ‘were wont to judge emperors not emperors of bishops’ (ibid., 108). 53 Patrick Collinson, The Elizabethan Puritan Movement (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1967), 201. Collinson notes that well into the 1580s the Puritans were convinced that Elizabeth was on their side in combating the abuses in the Church. He reminds us in another place that no one in that century would have imagined that religious pluralism, as we understand it, would have been either possible or desirable, see Patrick Collinson, Elizabethans (London: Bloomsbury Academic, 22003), 228. 54 Diarmaid MacCulloch, Thomas Cranmer: A Life (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1997), 151. MacCulloch notes: ‘Cranmer came to hate the papacy, and therefore he needed the Royal Supremacy to fill the chasm of authority which had opened up in his thinking as a result’. He goes on to cite a sermon in which Cranmer recounts his long time desire for the popes’ authority to be destroyed, now he thanked God that he had seen it in this realm. The term ‘authority vacuum’ is Eamon Duffy’s (Duffy, Saints, Sacrilege and Sedition, 186). John King’s (King, Tudor Royal Iconography) argument a generation ago that this iconography was simply inherited from medieval traditions surely places too much emphasis on continuity.

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suggestive for our period as well: with the pope banished, Elizabeth filled the same authority vacuum for Protestants in general. We noted earlier Patrick Collinson’s observation that the Protestant focus on town and family had the effect of sacralising these settings. And for Protestants, as time went on, this sacralisation came to be symbolised by the person of the queen.55 However, I would like to expand this metaphor of vacuum and suggest that, with the sweeping away of an old way of life – its festivals, rood screens, and processions, there remained not only an authority chasm, but an ‘imaginative vacuum’, a representational space that needed filling. As David Freedberg has argued, the impulse to image divinity is perennial – aniconic religion, he thinks, is impossible. Indeed the persistent attempts to suppress images are themselves testimony to the inevitable urge to picture.56 And during this century the need to picture religious qualities was being forced out of the sanctuary and into the display and rituals of the state. The most helpful voice in completing this suggestion has been Eamon Duffy. His classic work Stripping of the Altars (1992) was perhaps the most influential work in forcing scholars to rethink the sixteenth-century transformation to Protestantism. In his more recent work Saints, Sacrilege and Sedition (2012), he has further described the communal devastation that resulted from the removal of the old practices and its visual culture. He argues ‘the transformation of sacred space […] had the effect of making invisible, and indeed abolishing, some of the social complexity of the parish’.57 What was being destroyed, he says, was the symbolic structure of the people. I would like to suggest, that, during the period of our study, what was going on was not so much destruction as displacement. With the withdrawal of the familiar religious practices and the comfortable furniture of worship, both in the sanctuary and the town, an imaginative vacuum was left which the cult of Elizabeth was called on to fill. This did not reflect a conscious intention, nor was it true for everyone. But overall this displacement and replacement, I think, goes some way toward accounting for the otherwise mysterious paradox of Protestant iconoclasm coexisting with the cult of

55 Regina Schwartz has observed a related dynamic in connection with the growing veneration of the state. She thinks that it was giving up the doctrine of Christ’s real presence in the Eucharist that created the space that was later filled by the cult of Elizabeth. She writes: ‘At the time when the critique against the claims of transubstantiation was most vociferous, ironically the state appropriated substantialism. The logic of Eucharist – of embodying the supreme value – kept coming back in different forms: a substantial body became the way to figure the monarch, the state, and the nation’, in Regina Schwartz, Sacramental Poetics at the Dawn of Secularism: When God Left the World (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2008), 37. 56 David Freedberg, The Power of Images: Studies in the History and Theory of Response (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1989), 54–65. 57 Duffy, Saints, Sacrilege and Sedition, 101, 166.

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Elizabeth. The older symbolic structure, rather than being effaced, was simply displaced onto the larger mimetic structure of cultural and political life. Yet there is a critical difference in this mobilisation of imagery that is referenced in my title (and in the theme of this book). The media exemplified in this portraiture is rallied in support of a new way of relating to the world. Previously imagery was constitutive of civic and religious relationships, now it has become merely representational – it was a symbol that needed to be decoded. Medieval imagery was not a text in need of interpretation; it constituted an imaginative world believers indwelt. With the Reformation, imagery has become media; it represents, it does not embody. We are not meant to contemplate it, but to see ‘through it’ to the sanctified world it celebrates.

Conclusion Still, Nicholas Sanders’s taunt lingers in the mind: ‘Breake if you dare the Image of the Queenes Maiestie’. Clearly there were Protestants who worried about this imagery. Grindel dared to raise his voice, later William Perkins’s writings reflected a Protestant concern, and some have seen an undercurrent of critique even in Spenser’s Fairie Queene.58 But overall prophetic voices raised against the excesses of the cult of Elizabeth were strangely muted. As the witness of martyrs during the century testifies, this prophetic voice was not absent – it had previously led an active life. And this leads me to my final example of contrasting voices. John Fisher, pro-Catholic bishop and later cardinal in England, was a special project of Henry VIII who undertook to support his education in Italy. In 1520 Fisher preached a sermon on the vanity and fragility of earthly splendor. Apparently he had just had occasion to see the splendor of the king and, in the sermon, he referred to the ‘rych clothes, in suylkes, velvettes, clothes of gold […] soo rich and goodly tentys, such justyngs, such tourney and such feats of warre’. But this, he confessed, in spite of his friendship with the king, had become loathsome to him. Kings he felt were in danger of ‘dazzling themselves to damnation’. Then he referred to the Book of Acts and the account of King Herod dressed in ‘glistering apparel and goodly arcyon (sic)’ so that the people ‘magnyfyed & praysed hym soveraynely as though he had been a god’. But almighty God struck him down to show that ‘all be but men, all be but mortell’.59 Since this was preached in 1520, Fisher could not have had Henry’s shameful divorce in mind, but he clearly did have the vanity of kingly power in his sights. But it is telling that Fisher had the sermon published only in 1532, when the 58 Hackett, Virgin Mother, 190–205. 59 In Duffy, Saints, Sacrilege and Sedition, 171–4.

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outcome of Henry’s divorce proceedings had become clear. Fisher, Eamon Duffy points out, had his hands on yet another ancient tradition that was needed to balance, and challenge, that of imperial rule: the vanity of earthly rulers.60 Already in the late 1520s Fisher had determined to lead an opposition to the king’s policies, and perhaps the divorce was for Fisher the last straw. The king tried to win back Fisher’s loyalty, offering inducements in exchange for his support of Henry’s marriage, but Fisher refused. By 1535, Henry could not stand the irritation of his old mentee and on 22 June 1535, John Fisher was beheaded. Half a century later, where were the Protestant voices raised against the vanities and excesses of the Elizabethan court? Though they surely existed, they have left few traces; after all, she was their queen and she had earned their loyalty. The contrast to Fisher may be illustrated by a performance of the Protestant John King. On 24 March 1603, three days after the death of Elizabeth, this Protestant divine preached a sermon at Whitehall. King had been chaplain to the lord keeper Thomas Egerton, the patron of Evangelical clergy; he was an Orthodox Calvinist, known for his moral rectitude, and would soon become the most famous preacher in London. This is what he said: ‘So there are two excellent women, one that bare Christ, and another that blessed Christ; to these we may joyne a third that bare and blessed him both. She [Elizabeth] bare him in hir heart as a wombe, she conceived him in faith, she brought him forth in aboundance of good works […]’.61 According to the Dictionary of National Biography, admiration for the sermon spread rapidly around London, and King went on to a distinguished career in the court of James I.62

Bibliography Becon, Thomas, The Workes of Thomas Becon (London: John Day, 1564). Bilson, Thomas, The True Difference betweene Christian Subiection and UnChristian Rebellion (Oxford: Joseph Barnes, 1585). Camden, William, The Historie of the Most Renowned and Victorious Princesse Elizabeth, the Late Queen of England (London: Thomas Harper for Benjamin Fisher, 1630). Collinson, Patrick, The Elizabethan Puritan Movement (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1967). Collinson, Patrick, The Birthpangs of Protestant England: Religious and Cultural Change in the 16th Century (Houndmills/Basingstoke: MacMillan, 1988). Collinson, Patrick, Elizabethans (London: Bloomsbury Academic, 22003). 60 Ibid., 176. 61 Quoted in Strong, Gloriana, 43. Hackett tries to temper this criticism by showing that King was simply reflecting on the prescribed Gospel reading for that day (Hackett, Virgin Mother, 225–6). 62 Peter E. McCullough, ‘King, John’, in Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, vol. 31, 634–5.

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Collinson, Patrick, ‘Elizabeth I’, in Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (60 vols.; Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004) vol. 14, 95–129. Doran, Susan, Queen Elizabeth I (New York: New York University Press, 2003). Duffy, Eamon, The Stripping of the Altars: Traditional Religion in England. C. 1400–1580 (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1992). Duffy, Eamon, Saints, Sacrilege and Sedition: Religion and Conflict in the Tudor Reformations (London: Bloomsbury Publishing, 2012). Dyrness, William, Reformed Theology and Visual Culture: The Protestant Imagination from Calvin to Edwards (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004). Elliott, John H., History in the Making (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2012). Freedberg, David, The Power of Images: Studies in the History and Theory of Response (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1989). Gitelman, Lisa, Always Already New: Media, History and the Data of Culture (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2008). Hackett, Helen, Virgin Mother, Maiden Queen: Elizabeth I and the Cult of the Virgin Mary (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1995). Jewel, John, The Works of John Jewel, Bishop of Salisbury, edited by Ayre, John (Cambridge: The Parker Society/Cambridge University Press, 1845–50). Johnston, Alexandra F., ‘Tudor Drama, Theatre and Society’, in Tittler, Robert/Jones, Norman (ed.), A Companion to Tudor Britain (Oxford: Blackwell, 2004) 430–47. King, John N., Tudor Royal Iconography: Literature and Art in an Age of Religious Crisis (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1989). MacCulloch, Diarmaid, Thomas Cranmer: A Life (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1997). Marshall, Peter, Heretics and Believers: A History of the English Reformation (New Haven, Yale University Press, 2017). McCullough, Peter E., ‘King, John’, in Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (60 vols.; Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004) vol. 31, 634–5. Nowell, Alexander, Catechisme (London: John Daye, 1571). Schwartz, Regina, Sacramental Poetics at the Dawn of Secularism: When God Left the World (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2008). Strong, Roy, Portraits of Queen Elizabeth (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1963). Strong, Roy, The English Icon: Elizabethan and Jacobean Portraiture (New York: Pantheon, 1969). Strong, Roy, The Cult of Elizabeth (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1977). Strong, Roy, The English Renaissance Miniature (New York: Thames and Hudson, 1983). Strong, Roy, Gloriana: The Portraits of Queen Elizabeth (New York: Thames and Hudson, 1987). Watt, Tessa, Cheap Print and Popular Piety: 1550–1640 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991). White, Paul W., Theatre and Reformation: Protestantism, Patronage, and Playing in Tudor England (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993). Yates, Frances, Astraea: The Imperial Theme in the Sixteenth Century (London: Routledge, Kegan and Paul, 1975).

Maria Lucia Weigel

Cultural transfers and shifts in meaning: Reformers’ portraits on English and German memorial sheets of the 18th and 19th centuries1

A memorial sheet of 1794 On 29 May 1794 a memorial sheet dedicated to the Reformation was published in the Historic Gallery, the main office of London art publisher Robert Bowyer. It was conceived as a single sheet and could be used to adorn the walls in homes (fig. 104).2 The engraving shows a bipartite composition, consisting of an allegory in the upper half of the sheet, which contains a half-naked female figure, scantily covered by an antique-looking cloth wrapped loosely about her body. She is about to push aside a wreath of dark clouds so that the sun can emerge from behind them. The lower half shows a finely marbled memorial plaque with a decorative border, containing portraits of several Reformers in the shape of medals. Those who are depicted include Wycliffe and Hus in the upper row, with Erasmus, Luther, Bucer and Melanchthon in the lower one, as indicated by inscriptions. At the centre of the plaque there is another inscription: ‘THE REFORMATION’. Four artists were involved in the working process, two draughtsmen, Robert Smirke for the depiction in the upper part, Charles Reuben Ryley for the ones in the lower part, and two engravers, Thomas Holloway and James Stow. This specialised commitment suggests that we are dealing here with an original creation produced under the aegis of the publisher. The artists knew one another from previous cooperation on other projects for Bowyer and others offering commissions.3 Bowyer himself was a member of the Royal Academy of 1 I am very much indebted to Francis John Kelly, Heidelberg, for translating the German text into English. 2 For a potential use of comparable prints as wall decoration see Richard W. Hutton, Robert Bowyer and the Historic Gallery. A Study of the Creation of the Magnificent Work to Promote the Arts in England (PhD thesis; University of Chicago, 1992), 25, n. 66. 3 Peter Tomory, ‘Holloway, Thomas (1748–1827)’, in Oxford Dictionary of National Biography Online (2004–), available at https://doi.org/10.1093/ref:odnb/13576 [1. 10. 2018]; N. N., ‘Holloway, Thomas’, in Allgemeines Lexikon der bildenden Künstler von der Antike bis zur

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Arts and had worked successfully as a painter of miniatures. As a publisher he had already released sheets with scenes from English history, in competition with the brothers Boydell, who themselves were also fine art publishers, providing a comparable product range.4 Bowyer regularly organised art exhibitions on his premises, and with the paintings that he commissioned he advertised extensive book projects, which were illustrated by converting these painted models into printed graphics.5

Reformers’ portraits on the memorial sheet of 1794 Let us begin with the analysis of the Reformers’ portraits in the lower part. Since the publishing of John Foxe’s Actes and Monuments, a Protestant martyrology, and thanks to his teachings, John Wycliffe has been regarded as the first in England – after Foxe – to have freed the light of the gospel from the darkness of obscuration in times of the Old Church.6 Jan Hus from Bohemia was sentenced to death by the Council of Constance in 1415 because of his demands for reforms within the Church. He is closely associated with Wycliffe due to his perception of the latter’s writings.7 In this line of tradition both have found their place among

4

5 6

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Gegenwart, edited by Thieme, Ulrich/Becker, Felix (37 vols.; Leipzig, Wilhelm Engelmann/E.A. Seemann, 1907–50) vol. 17 (1924), 385f; Lionel H. Cust, ‘Ryley, Charles Reuben (c.1752–1798)’, in Oxford Dictionary of National Biography Online (2004–), available at https://doi.org/10. 1093/ref:odnb/24419 [1. 10. 2018]; Tina Fiske, ‘Smirke, Robert (1753–1845)’, in Oxford Dictionary of National Biography Online (2004–), available at https://doi.org/10.1093/ref:odnb/ 25762 [1. 10. 2018]; Freeman M. O’Donoghue, ‘Stow, James (b.c. 1770, d. in or after 1823)’, in Oxford Dictionary of National Biography Online (2004–), available at https://doi.org/10.1093/ ref:odnb/26610 [1. 10. 2018]. Deborah Graham-Vernon, ‘Bowyer, Robert (1758–1834)’, in Oxford Dictionary of National Biography Online (2004–), available at https://doi.org/10.1093/ref:odnb/3091 [1. 10. 2018]; Hutton, Robert Bowyer, 22. For the Shakespeare Gallery of the Boydell brothers see Rosie Dias, Exhibiting Englishness. John Boydell’s Shakespeare Gallery and the Formation of a National Aesthetic (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2013); for Bowyer competing with the Boydell brothers see Hutton, Robert Bowyer, 209f. Hutton, Robert Bowyer, 22, 200ff. For this concept of English church history, developed by Foxe, see Martin Ohst, ‘Das Martyrium in der deutschen und in der englischen Reformation’, in Wendebourg, Dorothea (ed.), Sister Reformations: The Reformation in Germany and England: Symposium on the Occasion of the 450th Anniversary of the Elizabethan Settlement, September 23rd–26th, 2009 / Schwesterreformationen: Die Reformation in Deutschland und in England: Symposion aus Anlaß des 450. Jahrestages des Elizabethan Settlement, 23.–26. September 2009 (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2010) 235–70, on 248f. Thomas Krzenck, Johannes Hus. Theologe, Kirchenreformer, Märtyrer (Gleichen/Zürich: Muster-Schmidt, 2011), 38f.

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the Reformers associated with England.8 They are even venerated as martyrs for their religious beliefs and their fight for freedom of conscience. Below Wycliffe and Hus the first generation of sixteenth century continental Reformers is shown, namely those who were instrumental in forming Protestantism in England. Desiderius Erasmus of Rotterdam, who numbers among the Reformers here, had visited England several times.9 He had established an intensive exchange with English scholars and was esteemed in theological circles for his writings, not only because of his Latin translation and critical edition of the Greek New Testament from 1516. First of all he offered a humanist approach, oriented to a precise study of sources and rhetoric, which laid the foundation for the reformatory discussion of the Holy Scriptures and the ecclesiastical teaching tradition.10 This scholar’s demands for social and cultural reforms also shaped subsequent reception of reformatory ideas in England. Martin Luther had been appreciated in England since the sixteenth century, not primarily for the theological content of his writings (an exception is his theologia crucis, used by evangelicals as legitimisation in times of persecution), but as a moral and religious model.11 His exemplary courage in fighting against the pope and the emperor became a topos as early as the sixteenth century. Martin Bucer had been living in England since 1549. He taught at Cambridge University and presented a comprehensive programme of reforms that provided for ecclesiastical and social reforms within the prevailing social system.12 He was active as a mediator between conservative and radical groups and participated in the revision of the Book of Common Prayer, the confessional document of the Anglican Church.

8 Pamela Tudor-Craig, ‘Group Portraits of the Protestant Reformers’, in Hamling, Tara/Williams, Richard L. (ed.), Art Re-Formed. Re-Assessing the Impact of the Reformation on the Visual Arts (Newcastle: Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2007) 87–97, on 92. For the impact of Foxe’s book see Jesse M. Lander, Inventing Polemic. Religion, Print and Literary Culture in Early Modern England (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006), 56ff. 9 For Erasmus’s contacts with England, see Hubertus Schulte Herbrüggen, ‘Erasmus und England: Erasmus und Morus’, in Buck, August (ed.), Erasmus und Europa (Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz, 1988) 91–109, on 92ff. 10 Carl R. Trueman, ‘Early English Evangelicals. Three Examples’, in Wendebourg (ed.), Sister Reformations, 15–28, on 27f. 11 Alec Ryrie, ‘The Afterlife of Lutheran England’, in Wendebourg (ed.), Sister Reformations, 213–34, on 215ff, 227, 231. 12 Martin Greschat, Martin Bucer. Ein Reformator und seine Zeit (1491–1551) (Münster: Aschendorff, 22009), 264ff, 270. See 268f for Bucer’s contribution to the Book of Common Prayer. See also N. Scott Amos, ‘Protestant Exiles in England. Martin Bucer, the Measured Approach to Reform, and the Elizabethan Settlement – “Eine gute, leidliche Reformation”’, in Wendebourg (ed.), Sister Reformations, 151–74, on 160ff for the latter.

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Since the time of Henry VIII, Philip Melanchthon had been considered to be the partner favoured in dialogue with the circles interested in Reformation.13 Protestant teaching that was only gradually established in England and not principally by higher authorities was mainly shaped by him. England would only fully consider itself a Protestant nation under Elizabeth I.14 It seems likely that theological advice was provided in conceiving at least the lower part of the engraving. The range of Reformers depicted seems not only to have been carefully considered, but also reveals a thorough knowledge of English religious history. It places the sheet within a moderate Anglican context, within which the Reformation is interpreted as a humanist, Erasmian, irenic movement.15 However, the concept hints at something else: it refers to an underlying idea that is common to all parts. All persons depicted could be looked upon as exempla of church history. Freedom is the concept that is intended. This key term, under which the Reformation could be perceived in the sixteenth as well as in the eighteenth centuries, had become very popular by the time the engraving was created.16 Two aspects played an important role: the Reformers’ fight against the papal church, interpreted as a struggle for freedom, and the dispute concerning the role of free will with respect to God. The perception of Luther as the topos of the struggle for freedom against tyranny has already been mentioned. Wycliffe and Hus have also gone down in English church history as proponents of freedom, which became the subject matter for early modern discourses.17 In 1524, Erasmus dealt with free will in his work De libero arbitrio; Luther promptly answered in De servo arbitrio the following year. Freedom as a term underlies all of Luther’s major writings of the 1520s.18 Melanchthon also dealt with this concept in discussing Christians’ claim

13 Christoph Schwöbel, ‘Melanchthons Wirkung im angelsächsischen Raum’, in Frank, Günter/ Köpf, Ulrich (ed.), Melanchthon und die Neuzeit (Stuttgart-Bad Cannstadt: FrommannHolzboog, 2003) 257–74, on 260ff; Ryrie, ‘The Afterlife’, 213. 14 Pasi Ihalainen, Protestant Nations Redefined. Changing Perceptions of National Identity in the Rhetoric of the English, Dutch and Swedish Public Churches, 1685–1772 (Leiden/Boston: Brill, 2005), 240. 15 For the evaluation of the sheet in this regard I owe many thanks to Charlotte Methuen, University of Glasgow. 16 Ihalainen, Protestant Nations, 494 and Friedrich W. Graf/Walter Sparn, ‘Protestantismus’, in Enzyklopädie der Neuzeit, edited by Jaeger, Friedrich (16 vols.; Stuttgart/Weimar: Metzler, 2005–12) vol. 10 (2009), 498–505, on 502. 17 For the variety of the discourses on collective ideas on freedom apart from their discussion in a reformatory context, see Georg Schmidt/Christopher Snigula/Martin van Gelderen (ed.), Kollektive Freiheitsvorstellungen im frühneuzeitlichen Europa (1400–1850) (Frankfurt a.M./ Berlin/Bern/Wien: Lang, 2006). 18 Volker Leppin, Martin Luther (Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, 22010), 154f.

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to natural rights with respect to the authorities.19 As Reformation history shows, freedom was interpreted in different ways in the various Protestant camps, but it nevertheless remained a focal point of reformatory self-conception. The work of the aforementioned Reformers reflects the struggle for spiritual freedom, but the definition of freedom in a political sense – as derived from this self-concept – has played an important role as well. It is manifested in the relations between the authorities, which united both political and religious leadership in England, and their subjects.20 Therefore, the demand for reforms in this area, as expressed by Erasmus and Bucer, should also be ascribed to the discourse on freedom within the context of this sheet. The discourse took on greater significance once again within the context of the eighteenth century.21 The conditio humana was subject to philosophical debates as well as to the implementation of freedom against governmental tyranny, which involved the rationally based conception of the state as a liberally constituted consensus of all of the forces in society. Under this central concept, that of reason, the philosophy of the Enlightenment had developed both in England and in other European countries. The discourse on reason embraced not only the discussion on the significance and constitution of the state, but also the dispute on religion. With regard to England, the writings of John Locke should be mentioned, which also influenced the constitution of revolutionary France.22 Freedom as a term played an important role in Locke’s theory of natural rights. Freedom and reason, however, were terms closely associated with political issues current in England in 1794. In that year England was at war with revolutionary France. The self-understanding of the English nation as a stronghold of freedom was rivalled by developments in France.23 England faced difficulties as coordinator of finances for the counter-revolutionary campaign in Europe. In the domestic sector the government took drastic measures against sympathisers of the French conditions. Poor harvests added another factor to fuel social distemper.24

19 Otto H. Pesch, ‘Wille/Willensfreiheit III’, Theologische Realenzyklopädie 36 (2004) 76–97, on 88. 20 This argument can be found in English State Sermons of the eighteenth century, see Ihalainen, Protestant Nations, 494ff. 21 Ibid., 493ff. 22 For John Locke between the poles of philosophy and religion in the English Enlightenment see Jan Rohls, Offenbarung, Vernunft und Religion (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2012), 377ff and Victor Nuovo, ‘Locke’s Proof of the Divine Authority of Scripture’, in Savage, Ruth (ed.), Philosophy and Religion in Enlightenment Britain. New Case Studies (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012) 57–76. 23 Chris Evans, Debating the Revolution. Britain in the 1790s (London: Tauris, 2006), 16. 24 Ibid., 20f, 25.

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The French Revolution was perceived in England within the context of its political reverberations and as a potential threat to the social order. It was thus debated in various media and on different social levels.25

The allegory of the Reformation on the memorial sheet of 1794 In broadsheets, the iconography of the French Revolution was perceived in detail. An oft-repeated motif was a circle of dark clouds and a sun breaking through them. This motif could have different connotations; in the French Revolution it worked as a rededication of a monarchist emblem.26 It could be accompanied by female personifications with various associations. The naked Truth or Freedom with a bonnet rouge, as well as Reason, to which a cult was dedicated at that time in France,27 could all serve as secular saviours and were subsequently transformed into polemics in England.28 They owed their communicable, motivic manifestations to broadly perceived iconographical compendiums, such as the Iconologia by Cesare Ripa, illustrated beginning with the edition of 1603.29 Hence, new pictorial inventions could be created on this basis. In using this kind of allegorical repertoire, not only was the French Revolution present in the visual memory of English viewers at that time, but the pictorial repertoire of the Enlightenment also fed on this source. The front page of the Encyclopédie of Diderot and d’Alembert, edited between 1751 and 1780, shows a female allegory of Truth, being unveiled by Reason and Philosophy set before a radiant sun.30 All this visual evidence is embedded in the discourse on a neoclassical form vocabulary, which evolved both in England and on the Continent. In France, however, it was associated with the French Revolution as its idiom.31 In this respect, it also enters the pictorial polemic of the insular opponent of war. 25 Evans, Debating the Revolution and David Bindman, The Shadow of the Guillotine. Britain and the French Revolution (London: British Museum Publications, 1989). 26 Klaus Herding/Rolf Reichardt, Die Bildpublizistik der Französischen Revolution (Frankfurt a.M.: Suhrkamp, 1989), 25ff. 27 Mona Ozouf, Festivals and the French Revolution (Cambridge, MA/London: Harvard University Press, 1988), 97ff. 28 Bindman, The Shadow of the Guillotine, 12. 29 Elisabeth Oy-Marra, ‘Medialität des Sinns und die Materialität der Bilder: Ripas Begriffsbilder im Medienwechsel’, in Logemann, Cornelia/Thimann, Michael (ed.), Cesare Ripa und die Begriffsbilder der Frühen Neuzeit (Zürich: Diaphanes, 2011) 199–219, on 201. 30 The model is a drawing by Charles-Nicolas Cochin the Younger, which was exhibited in the Salon at Paris in 1765, see Joseph Burke, The Iconography of the Enlightenment in English Art (Sydney: Sydney University Press for the Australian Academy of the Humanities, 1970), 8 for a contemporary interpretation of the sheet. 31 Klaus Herding, Im Zeichen der Aufklärung. Studien zur Moderne (Frankfurt a.M.: Fischer Taschenbuch Verlag, 1989), 19f with reference to further literature.

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The upper part of the sheet presented here can now be viewed. Primarily meant to be an allegory of the Reformation, its reference to contemporary pictorial concepts of French origin cannot be ignored with regard to the political situation. On French sheets, a personified Truth or Freedom helped the emerging sun of Reason or Nation to burst through the clouds, depending on the definition given in the inscription or in a related text. This visual topos has now been applied to a cultural myth of the English past, the Reformation. Various spheres of interpretation, not manifested in obligatory iconographical specifications in the French context, also overlay one another in the allegory of the English sheet. In addition to this, the metaphorical use of light in the context of a reformatory iconography harks back to a long tradition, as shown on the memorial sheets commemorating Reformation anniversaries.32 The possibilities of visualising biblical imagery, as unfolded in the first chapters of the Gospel of John,33 are revealed here. In this biblical context, both the dualism of light and darkness can be found, coupled with the idea of being close to or distant from God, and the idea of truth, filled with divine light, which is linked to the gospels, and not only on memorial sheets of Reformation anniversaries.34 Both aspects can be used to interpret the allegory in the English engraving. The metaphor of light, which was frequently employed in the reformatory past, now appears in a new formulation that takes the pictorial knowledge of the contemporary viewer into account while at the same time taking a position with regard to the sovereignty of interpretation in symbolic systems. The idea of the truth of the gospel, which was once again brought to light by the Reformation, is connected to freedom as a topic of the latest linguistic and visual discourses. A concept of freedom, established in the country’s own past – visualised in the lower part of the picture – is set within the present intellectual debate on the impact of the French Revolution. Two points require additional clarification. First, there is the idea of the Reformation as a cultural myth. It is advisable to look at the lower part of the sheet again because it is there that this interpretation of the Reformation takes shape. The block-like character of the presentation immediately strikes the eye. It is used as an artistic strategy to point up a certain aspect of the depiction. The Reformation, represented by its protagonists, becomes a symbolic figure recalling history and can thus be memorised as such by virtue of the mode of presentation.35 The interval of time between the appearance of Wycliffe, Hus and 32 This tradition was known to the authors of the prints in times of the French Revolution, see Herding/Reichardt, Die Bildpublizistik, 26. 33 Karl M. Woschitz, Verborgenheit in der Erscheinung. Mystagogie und Spiritualität des Johannesevangeliums (Freiburg/Basel/Wien: Herder, 2012), 238ff. 34 Otto Böcher, ‘Licht und Feuer, III: Neues Testament’, Theologische Realenzyklopädie 21 (1991) 97–107, on 99ff. 35 For the process of transforming factual into remembered history, see Jan Assmann, Das

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the sixteenth-century Reformers, in light of their varied impact on history, is denied by depicting of all of them in strict profile. Only by arranging them in two rows can the lapse of time still be experienced. The tablet itself is conceived as a memorial plaque in stone, on which the portraits seem to be engraved to preserve them for eternity. This material-based connotation can also be found in early modern portraits with a humanist design that alludes to formats from antiquity.36 The Reformers’ images are designed in the shape of portrait medals, whose line of tradition reaches far back to Roman coins showing emperors’ likenesses. These were also rendered in stern profile that signified the nobilitas of the personages thus depicted.37 During the Renaissance, portrait medals became much-valued memorial objects of venerated personages. These lines of tradition are also to be found in the concept of the English sheet. Bowyer, the publisher, edited a sheet with Roman portrait coins in the same year as the Reformation sheet was published.38 The former follows the same concept of presenting the portraits as does the latter, thereby satisfying the demands of potential buyers interested in archaeology as artefacts of their own insular and cultural past. That same interest is anticipated by the Reformation sheet. These portraits hark back to authentic early modern pictorial creations, namely portrait medals. Friedrich Hagenauer, the famous sixteenth-century medallist, can be regarded as the creator in the case of Melanchthon and Bucer’s portraits.39 The use of such a design guaranteed the portraits’ authenticity and thus emphasised the overall statement of the sheet. The prerequisite for this is the connoisseurship of both the creator and the viewers, together with their knowledge of the statement connected to certain modes of depiction. The second point that requires clarification is the status of the Reformation within the collective English commemorative culture of the eighteenth century. In this period, the Reformation was integrated into the discourse on national identity and functioned as an identity-establishing myth.40 It had generated

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kulturelle Gedächtnis. Schrift, Erinnerung und politische Identität in frühen Hochkulturen (Munich: Beck, 62007), 52, 77ff for funding myths. Peter-Klaus Schuster, ‘Überleben im Bild. Bemerkungen zum humanistischen Bildnis der Lutherzeit’, in Hofmann, Werner (ed.), Köpfe der Lutherzeit (Munich: Prestel, 1983) 18–25, on 20; Peter-Klaus Schuster, ‘Individuelle Ewigkeit. Hoffnungen und Ansprüche im Bildnis der Lutherzeit’, in Buck, August (ed.), Biographie und Autobiographie in der Renaissance. Arbeitsgespräch in der Herzog August Bibliothek Wolfenbüttel vom 1. bis 3. November 1982. Vorträge (Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz, 1983) 121–73, on 125f. John Cunnally, The Role of Greek and Roman Coins in the Art of the Italian Renaissance (PhD thesis; University of Pennsylvania, 1984), 11, 22f. Hutton, Robert Bowyer, 1105, fig. 97. Georg Habich, ‘Studien zur deutschen Renaissance-Medaille: III Friedrich Hagenauer (Schluß)’, Jahrbuch der preussischen Kunstsammlungen 28 (1907) 230–72, on 248–59 and fig. 94, 97. Ihalainen, Protestant Nations, 176f.

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Protestantism, which was used as a rhetorical symbol to build up national identity in language-based discourses in the first half of the century, but without being confined to the Anglican Church alone. At the time, England was seen as the defender of the Protestant cause. In the second half of the century, new concepts of national identity arose, inter alia, that of freedom. This was now defined as the inherent freedom both of the religious as well as the political systems and was no longer considered as having resulted from the Protestant faith alone in the narrowest sense of the term. Nevertheless, a main concern of establishmentarian sermons continued to emphasise a concept of freedom within the context of the Reformers selected that emphasised spiritual freedom and victory over tyranny as achieved by the Reformation. Moreover, an extension of the term Reformation towards an autonomous and reasonable handling of religious questions is also exhibited in this medium as a component of national identity.41 The praise of one’s own form of government as a system of rule based on consensus and reason added to this and accentuated the political aspects of the principles derived from the Reformation.42 The connection between the English Reformation and a national consciousness had proven to be constitutive for the English self-concept. The idea of England as a nation of God’s elect, meant to preserve the true faith after it was exposed to persecution in Germany, was also reflected in the concept of English history as one of salvation, as can be seen in writings reflecting the tradition of John Foxe’s martyrology.43 Against this background, both parts of the engraving can be interpreted in a synopsis. They are, on the one hand, remembered history, and, on the other hand, they are an allegory of the principles of freedom and truth emerging from the Reformation, endowed with a contemporary form. They were then integrated into the discourse on national identity, conducted by the English state church. Consequently, the modernity of the Reformation was brought to bear in those contemporary intellectual debates.

41 Ibid., 494. 42 John J. Fresselicque, A Sermon of Praise and Thanksgiving to Almighty God, for the Late Victory Obtained over the French Fleet, on the 28th and 29th of May, and 1st of June; Preached on Board His Majesty’s Ship Bellerophon, at Sea, on Sunday the 8th Day of June, 1794 (Gosport: J. Watts, 1794), 33. 43 Andrew Starkie, ‘Contested Histories of the English Church: Gilbert Burnet and Jeremy Collier’, in Kewes, Paulina (ed.), The Uses of History in Early Modern England (San Marino, CA: Huntington Library, 2006) 329–45, on 340.

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The historical context of the memorial sheet of 1794 The reason for generating such a confessional sheet – in a national sense – can be determined precisely. It is unusual to indicate an exact date on an engraving, but this is exactly what happened here. Obviously, the publisher intended to hint at one or more specific events related to that particular date in the collective consciousness. Since 1660, the Anglican calendar of feast days had recorded the 29th of May as the date to celebrate the restoration of the English monarchy,44 which was an event that was crucial for the self-image of the nation and was commemorated in an ecclesiastical context. This connotation was eclipsed by the events that occurred in 1794. On that day, the English fleet achieved one of several victories over the French in the course of the so-called Atlantic Campaign.45 Apparently, this favourable trend was not only connected to observations on the freedom of the English nation, but also to its godly and most rational system of government, and this was included in establishmentarian sermons.46 Bowyer also took advantage of this opportune development and on 12 July 1794 had Smirke sketch a sheet referring to the English victory, a sheet that summarised all the events leading up to the final victory on 1 June.47 In the upper part it shows an allegory, consisting of Fama crowning a personified Britannia. The lower part is occupied by a memorial plaque with portrait medals of the English captains who came out of the conflict as victors. A sheet dating from 1795 was composed in the same manner; it also shows a plaque with victorious navigators and captains of the Elizabethan era.48 The parallels between the Reformation sheet and the one from 1795 are obvious. Glorious events in both the distant and the most recent past are showcased as memorials of national consequence. The motivic repertoire combines an allegory that visualises fame and victory in the form of personifications with a commemorative plaque bearing portrait medals. The threat from abroad accompanied by calling England’s national values into question – as this link obtained at least in contemporary establishmentarian sermons on the events of 179449 – is the backdrop, against which the pictorial 44 Ihalainen, Protestant Nations, 31. 45 Robert Gardiner, ‘The Glorious First of June: Preliminary Skirmishes’, in Gardiner, Robert (ed.), Fleet Battle and Blockade. The French Revolutionary War 1793–1797 (London: Chatham, 1996) 27–9. 46 Fresselicque, Sermon, 33. 47 Hutton, Robert Bowyer, 23 and 1017, fig. 5. The sheet was published in 1803. 48 Ibid., 1103, fig. 39. 49 Fresselicque, Sermon, 3ff and 16.

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creation can be understood as the self-assurance of the English nation with regard to its future viability. As a pictorial figure of thought endowed with visual presence, the Reformation is well suited to enter into the collective consciousness in this way.50 It provides spiritual and civil freedom as a heritage of the reformatory past. In this respect an important prerequisite for achieving national consensus is a moderate presentation of the Reformation achieved by the selection of the Reformers depicted.

A Leipzig memorial sheet of 1817 After the English memorial sheet had been adopted in Leipzig one year later in a smaller format and with a different selection of portraits, but with an equal number of Reformers,51 it again served as a model in 1817, for a Denkmal am dritten Jubelfeste der Reformation (Memorial to the Third Centennial Celebration of the Reformation), as the caption states that has replaced the inscription (fig. 105).52 Leipzig engraver Johann Gottlieb Boettger53 produced it for publisher Adam Friedrich Gotthelf Baumgärtner, who brought it out in his Leipzig industry Comptoir that had grown out of a bookshop in 1800.54 A few but nevertheless significant changes were made with regard to the English sheet. The aureole in the allegorical part is accentuated; it reaches beyond the zone of clouds and outshines the memorial plaque. The latter features eight Reformers’ portraits instead of six. In addition to Wycliffe, Hus and Erasmus in the top row, Hutten and Luther are in the second row, while Melanchthon, Zwingli and Calvin appear in the lowermost row. Bucer has been omitted. The stern profile to the left is kept in those portraits that were presented before in the English engraving. The portraits of Hutten, Zwingli and Calvin stem from paintings and engravings of the sixteenth century. The same intention is manifest, namely for authentication as in 50 Kruse, in publishing the sheet within the context of Luther illustrations, describes the depiction without an analysis of the concept as Verknüpfung von nicht Zusammengehörigem (‘conjunction of nonmatching parts’), see Joachim Kruse, ‘Lutherillustrationen im frühen 19. Jahrhundert’, in Moeller, Bernd (ed.), Luther in der Neuzeit. Wissenschaftliches Symposium des Vereins für Reformationsgeschichte (Gütersloh: Gütersloher Verlagshaus Gerd Mohn, 1983) 194–226, on 195. 51 It is the front page of a booklet which was published by Voss & Compagnie, Leipzig, 1801, under the title Abbildungen berühmter Reformatoren, Melanchthonhaus, Bretten Library, sign. MHB 1382. 52 In the signature the English artists Smirke and Ryley are mentioned as authors of the drawing. 53 Hans Vollmer, ‘Boettger, Johann Gottlieb’, in Allgemeines Lexikon der bildenden, vol. 4 (1910) 211. 54 Karl Karmarsch, ‘Baumgärtner, Adam Friedrich Gotthelf ’, in Allgemeine Deutsche Biographie (45 vols.; München/Leipzig: Duncker & Humblot, 1875–1912) vol. 2 (1875), 168.

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the English sheet, by incorporating Renaissance medal portraits.55 The reception of an English model recognises the publisher as a connoisseur of contemporary taste, and not only of the Leipzig bourgeoisie, who also knew how to enhance this in other pursuits with fashion and gardening journals of English origin.56

The historical context of the memorial sheet of 1817 The changes indicated above thus reveal a new contextualisation. It has to be assumed that here we also have to deal with commemoration of the Reformation in the form of a figure of thought, which is integrated into the discourse on freedom. Of course, the historical context is nevertheless different now. Saxony suffered large territorial losses after the Anti-Napoleonic Wars of Liberation. The Saxon king only returned home in 1813 from incarceration as a prisoner of war and was jubilantly received.57 Nevertheless, the country continued to consider itself to be the heartland of the Reformation.58 The identification with the tercentenary of the Reformation in 1817 included a national component that had already manifested itself in the three aspects characterising the Wartburg Festival observed by German student fraternities, which had been celebrated only a few weeks earlier. On this occasion, celebrating the Reformation was associated with celebrating the victory in the Battle of Leipzig and with the demand for national unification, emerging from the perception of Luther and the experience of the Wars of Liberation.59 Goethe even

55 The depiction in differing viewpoints could also be due to aesthetic reasons, see Ulf Dräger, ‘Die preussischen Medaillen auf die Union der protestantischen Kirchen und das Reformationsjubiläum 1817’, in Knape, Rosemarie/Treu, Martin (ed.), Preußische Lutherverehrung im Mansfelder Land (Leipzig: Evangelische Verlagsanstalt, 2002) 185–200, on 187 for Karl Friedrich Schinkel about his sketches of a medal on the Church Union in Prussia, 1817. 56 Sarah Richards, ‘Late Eighteenth-Century Prints in Leipzig’s Periodical Press: Cultural Transfer of the English Style’, in Kaenel, Philippe/Reichardt, Rolf (ed.), Interkulturelle Kommunikation in der europäischen Druckgraphik im 18. und 19. Jahrhundert / The European Print and Cultural Transfer in the 18th and 19th Centuries / Gravure et communication intellectuelle en Europe aux 18e et 19e siècles (Hildesheim/Zürich/New York: Georg Olms Verlag, 2007) 223–43. 57 Wolfgang Flügel, Konfession und Jubiläum. Zur Institutionalisierung der lutherischen Gedenkkultur in Sachsen 1617–1830 (Leipzig: Leipziger Universitäts-Verlag, 2005), 226. 58 Wichmann von Meding, Kirchenverbesserung: die deutschen Reformationspredigten des Jahres 1817 (Bielefeld: Luther-Verlag, 1986), 57. 59 Ibid., 94; Peter Brandt, ‘Das studentische Wartburgfest vom 18./19. Oktober 1817’, in Düding, Dieter/Friedemann, Peter/Münch, Paul (ed.), Öffentliche Festkultur. Politische Feste in Deutschland von der Aufklärung bis zum Ersten Weltkrieg (Reinbek bei Hamburg: Rowohlt, 1988) 89–112; Axel Lange, ‘Reformation und Revolution. Eine theologisch-politische Diskussion im Umkreis des Wartburgfestes und des Reformationsjubiläums von 1817’, in

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contemplated combining the Reformation’s anniversary with the commemoration of the Battle of Leipzig. In an almanac on the Reformation, dedicated to the duke of the other part of Saxony by Erfurt bookseller and publisher Friedrich Keyser, Berlin theologian Wilhelm de Wette interpreted the Reformation as a synthesis of national and religious spirit.60 With regard to church history, the situation can be characterised as follows: in the context of debates on the Enlightenment, the differences between Lutherans and Reformists had been relativised at an early stage. In the jubilee year they culminated in the equalisation of both churches in Saxony.61 This explains the admittance of Calvin and Zwingli to the circle of the depicted Reformers. Erasmus was then ascribed to the Protestants because of ‘his principles, his striving, and the spirit of his works’.62 The threat that the Catholic Church had once posed now faded into the background behind the shared experience of foreign domination and the secularisation of 1803.63 Anti-Catholic propaganda was avoided in the Saxon anniversary sermons, the vocabulary ranged between ‘light’, ‘remaining’, ‘truth’ and ‘freedom’,64 the same terms that can be perceived in the original context of the English sheet, but naturally with different political connotations.

The idea of continued Reformation on the memorial sheet of 1817 A second idea that seems to be important in relation to the German sheet is that of continued Reformation. Well-prepared in connection with Pietism and enlightened theology that had been established in Saxony in the last quarter of the eighteenth century, the Reformation was seen as a point of origin in an ongoing evolvement of freedom both of faith and conscience. In the context of the jubilee, the Reformation was thus looked upon as the guarantor of civil and at the same time public welfare in that age.65 The revolutionary potential, for which Protes-

60

61 62 63 64 65

Dedner, Burghard (ed.), Das Wartburgfest und die oppositionelle Bewegung in Hessen (Marburg: Hitzeroth, 1994) 215–30. Wilhelm M.L. de Wette, ‘Über den Verfall der protestantischen Kirche in Deutschland und die Mittel, ihr wieder aufzuhelfen’, in Keyser, Friedrich (ed.), Reformations Almanach für Luthers Verehrer auf das evangelische Jubeljahr 1817 (Erfurt: Uckermann, 1817) 296–371, on 344; Lange, ‘Reformation und Revolution, 223ff. Flügel, Konfession und Jubiläum, 220f. Gottfried E. Petri, ‘Versuch einer Skitze über die Folgen der Reformation: erster Abschnitt; Folgen der Reformation für Religion, Sitten, Wissenschaft und bürgerliches Wesen unter der Protestanten’, in Keyser (ed.), Reformations Almanach, 145–98, on 178. Flügel, Konfession und Jubiläum, 221. Meding, Kirchenverbesserung, 59, 142. Ibid., 157; Flügel, Konfession und Jubiläum, 235; Lange, ‘Reformation und Revolution’, 215.

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tantism was often reproached, was reinterpreted as a potential for political reforms that was inherent in Protestantism. Against this background the allegorical part of the sheet gained in importance that reflected the latest developments in the history of thought in Germany. Contemporary viewers could then see an allegory of progress that visualised an inherent aspect of the Protestant faith. It only requires a small step to connect this idea with the political vision of a free German nation. This intention is revealed in admitting Ulrich von Hutten to the circle of Reformers. Beginning with Wieland and Herder in the late eighteenth century, a cult was made of the sixteenth-century humanist nobleman.66 In his writings, he had proclaimed himself a fighter for political reforms with the purpose of creating a German nation. In so doing, Hutten had confronted Luther, who continued the struggle in the realm of ecclesiastical reforms. Despite his failure, Hutten was celebrated in the nineteenth century as a ‘German martyr’, to whom the idea of the Reformation’s political completion was connected. Hutten and Luther are juxtaposed in the centre of the plaque on the German sheet. Luther had also been integrated into a political discourse on a free German nation since the end of the eighteenth century, thereby obviating a purely Saxon context.67 His commitment to spiritual freedom against the papal church had made him a hero of freedom in a pan-German context. In this respect he was immortalised both in literature and in the arts as well. Sometimes this was achieved by associating him with symbols that bore a national connotation, such as the German oak tree.68 On the Reformation sheet, the interpretation of Luther as a national hero is attached to the appearance of Hutten.69 Luther’s medal portrait adopted unchanged from the English sheet is thus newly contextualised.

66 Wilhelm Kreutz, ‘Der “Huttenkult” im 19. Jahrhundert’, in Laub, Peter (ed.), Ulrich von Hutten. Ritter, Humanist, Publizist 1488–1523. Katalog zur Ausstellung des Landes Hessen anla¨ßlich des 500. Geburtstages (Melsungen: Gutenberg, 1988) 347–58. 67 Martin Scharfe, ‘Zu Form und Bedeutung der Luther-Verehrung im 19. Jahrhundert’, in Eidam, Hardy/Seib, Gerhard (ed.), ‘Er fühlt der Zeiten ungeheuren Bruch und fest umklammert er sein Bibelbuch…’: zum Lutherkult im 19. Jahrhundert (Berlin: Schelzky & Jeep, 1996) 11–21. 68 Ibid., 37, fig. 21. 69 This combination can already be found on sixteenth-century broadsheets, see Ilonka van Gülpen, Der deutsche Humanismus und die frühe Reformations-Propaganda 1520–1526. Das Lutherporträt im Dienst der Bildpublizistik (Hildesheim/Zürich/New York: Georg Olms Verlag, 2002), 461, fig. 48.

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Conclusion The favourable acceptance of the English sheet within the context of the anniversary of the Reformation in Germany in 1817 represents a cultural transfer. It unfolds on different levels. The preference of the German public for all things English points to its perception in terms of aesthetics. However, the English engraving was also applicable to the German situation with regard to the subject matter. The idea of striving for religious freedom, featured in two aspects on the English sheet, is propounded there in the intention of national self-assurance in times of impending internal and external hazard. On the German sheet, a change in meaning is achieved. After the end of French occupation of German territories and after their reorganisation, the question of an adequate political constitution arose. In the context of the anniversary of the Reformation in 1817, it was associated with a new perspective on Protestantism and on its founding events in invoking both as factors requisite to restructure the quondam political system.

Bibliography Amos, N. Scott, ‘Protestant Exiles in England. Martin Bucer, the Measured Approach to Reform, and the Elizabethan Settlement – “Eine gute, leidliche Reformation”’, in Wendebourg, Dorothea (ed.), Sister Reformations: The Reformation in Germany and England: Symposium on the Occasion of the 450th Anniversary of the Elizabethan Settlement, September 23rd–26th, 2009 / Schwesterreformationen: Die Reformation in Deutschland und in England: Symposion aus Anlaß des 450. Jahrestages des Elizabethan Settlement, 23.–26. September 2009 (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2010) 151–74. Assmann, Jan, Das kulturelle Gedächtnis. Schrift, Erinnerung und politische Identität in frühen Hochkulturen (Munich: Beck, 62007). Bindman, David, The Shadow of the Guillotine. Britain and the French Revolution (London: British Museum Publications, 1989). Böcher, Otto, ‘Licht und Feuer, III: Neues Testament’, Theologische Realenzyklopädie 21 (1991) 97–107. Brandt, Peter, ‘Das studentische Wartburgfest vom 18./19. Oktober 1817’, in Düding, Dieter/Friedemann, Peter/Münch, Paul (ed.), Öffentliche Festkultur. Politische Feste in Deutschland von der Aufklärung bis zum Ersten Weltkrieg (Reinbek bei Hamburg: Rowohlt, 1988) 89–112. Burke, Joseph, The Iconography of the Enlightenment in English Art (Sydney: Sydney University Press for the Australian Academy of the Humanities, 1970). Cunnally, John, The Role of Greek and Roman Coins in the Art of the Italian Renaissance (PhD thesis; University of Pennsylvania, 1984). Cust, Lionel H., ‘Ryley, Charles Reuben (c.1752–1798)’, in Oxford Dictionary of National Biography Online (2004–), available at https://doi.org/10.1093/ref:odnb/24419 [1. 10. 2018].

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de Wette, Wilhelm M.L., ‘Über den Verfall der protestantischen Kirche in Deutschland und die Mittel, ihr wieder aufzuhelfen’, in Keyser, Friedrich (ed.), Reformations Almanach für Luthers Verehrer auf das evangelische Jubeljahr 1817 (Erfurt: Uckermann, 1817) 296– 371. Dias, Rosie, Exhibiting Englishness. John Boydell’s Shakespeare Gallery and the Formation of a National Aesthetic (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2013). Dräger, Ulf, ‘Die preussischen Medaillen auf die Union der protestantischen Kirchen und das Reformationsjubiläum 1817’, in Knape, Rosemarie/Treu, Martin (ed.), Preußische Lutherverehrung im Mansfelder Land (Leipzig: Evangelische Verlagsanstalt, 2002) 185– 200. Evans, Chris, Debating the Revolution. Britain in the 1790s (London: Tauris, 2006). Fiske, Tina, ‘Smirke, Robert (1753–1845)’, in Oxford Dictionary of National Biography Online (2004–), available at https://doi.org/10.1093/ref:odnb/25762 [1. 10. 2018]. Flügel, Wolfgang, Konfession und Jubiläum. Zur Institutionalisierung der lutherischen Gedenkkultur in Sachsen 1617–1830 (Leipzig: Leipziger Universitäts-Verlag, 2005). Fresselicque, John J., A Sermon of Praise and Thanksgiving to Almighty God, for the Late Victory Obtained over the French Fleet, on the 28th and 29th of May, and 1st of June; Preached on Board His Majesty’s Ship Bellerophon, at Sea, on Sunday the 8th Day of June, 1794 (Gosport: J. Watts, 1794). Gardiner, Robert, ‘The Glorious First of June: Preliminary Skirmishes’, in Gardiner, Robert (ed.), Fleet Battle and Blockade. The French Revolutionary War 1793–1797 (London: Chatham, 1996) 27–9. Graf, Friedrich W./Sparn, Walter, ‘Protestantismus’, in Enzyklopädie der Neuzeit, edited by Jaeger, Friedrich (16 vols.; Stuttgart/Weimar: Metzler, 2005–12) vol. 10 (2009), 498–505. Graham-Vernon, Deborah, ‘Bowyer, Robert (1758–1834)’, in Oxford Dictionary of National Biography Online (2004–), available at https://doi.org/10.1093/ref:odnb/3091 [1. 10. 2018]. Greschat, Martin, Martin Bucer. Ein Reformator und seine Zeit (1491–1551) (Münster: Aschendorff, 22009). Habich, Georg, ‘Studien zur deutschen Renaissance-Medaille: III Friedrich Hagenauer (Schluß)’, Jahrbuch der preussischen Kunstsammlungen 28 (1907) 230–72. Herding, Klaus, Im Zeichen der Aufklärung. Studien zur Moderne (Frankfurt a.M.: Fischer Taschenbuch Verlag, 1989). Herding, Klaus/Reichardt, Rolf, Die Bildpublizistik der Französischen Revolution (Frankfurt a.M.: Suhrkamp, 1989). N. N., ‘Holloway, Thomas’, in Allgemeines Lexikon der bildenden Künstler von der Antike bis zur Gegenwart, edited by Thieme, Ulrich/Becker, Felix (37 vols.; Leipzig, Wilhelm Engelmann/E.A. Seemann, 1907–50) vol. 17 (1924), 385f. Hutton, Richard W., Robert Bowyer and the Historic Gallery. A Study of the Creation of the Magnificent Work to Promote the Arts in England (PhD thesis; University of Chicago, 1992). Ihalainen, Pasi, Protestant Nations Redefined. Changing Perceptions of National Identity in the Rhetoric of the English, Dutch and Swedish Public Churches, 1685–1772 (Leiden/ Boston: Brill, 2005). Karmarsch, Karl, ‘Baumgärtner, Adam Friedrich Gotthelf ’, in Allgemeine Deutsche Biographie (45 vols.; München/Leipzig: Duncker & Humblot, 1875–1912) vol. 2 (1875), 168.

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Kreutz, Wilhelm, ‘Der “Huttenkult” im 19. Jahrhundert’, in Laub, Peter (ed.), Ulrich von Hutten. Ritter, Humanist, Publizist 1488–1523. Katalog zur Ausstellung des Landes Hessen anla¨ßlich des 500. Geburtstages (Melsungen: Gutenberg, 1988) 347–58. Kruse, Joachim, ‘Lutherillustrationen im frühen 19. Jahrhundert’, in Moeller, Bernd (ed.), Luther in der Neuzeit. Wissenschaftliches Symposium des Vereins für Reformationsgeschichte (Gütersloh: Gütersloher Verlagshaus Gerd Mohn, 1983) 194–226. Krzenck, Thomas, Johannes Hus. Theologe, Kirchenreformer, Märtyrer (Gleichen/Zürich: Muster-Schmidt, 2011). Lander, Jesse M., Inventing Polemic. Religion, Print and Literary Culture in Early Modern England (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006). Lange, Axel, ‘Reformation und Revolution. Eine theologisch-politische Diskussion im Umkreis des Wartburgfestes und des Reformationsjubiläums von 1817’, in Dedner, Burghard (ed.), Das Wartburgfest und die oppositionelle Bewegung in Hessen (Marburg: Hitzeroth, 1994) 215–30. Leppin, Volker, Martin Luther (Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, 22010). Meding, Wichmann von, Kirchenverbesserung: die deutschen Reformationspredigten des Jahres 1817 (Bielefeld: Luther-Verlag, 1986). Nuovo, Victor, ‘Locke’s Proof of the Divine Authority of Scripture’, in Savage, Ruth (ed.), Philosophy and Religion in Enlightenment Britain. New Case Studies (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012) 57–76. O’Donoghue, Freeman M., ‘Stow, James (b.c. 1770, d. in or after 1823)’, in Oxford Dictionary of National Biography Online (2004–), available at https://doi.org/10.1093/ref: odnb/26610 [1. 10. 2018]. Ohst, Martin, ‘Das Martyrium in der deutschen und in der englischen Reformation’, in Wendebourg, Dorothea (ed.), Sister Reformations: The Reformation in Germany and England: Symposium on the Occasion of the 450th Anniversary of the Elizabethan Settlement, September 23rd–26th, 2009 / Schwesterreformationen: Die Reformation in Deutschland und in England: Symposion aus Anlaß des 450. Jahrestages des Elizabethan Settlement, 23.–26. September 2009 (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2010) 235–70. Oy-Marra, Elisabeth, ‘Medialität des Sinns und die Materialität der Bilder: Ripas Begriffsbilder im Medienwechsel’, in Logemann, Cornelia/Thimann, Michael (ed.), Cesare Ripa und die Begriffsbilder der Frühen Neuzeit (Zürich: Diaphanes, 2011) 199–219. Ozouf, Mona, Festivals and the French Revolution (Cambridge, MA/London: Harvard University Press, 1988). Pesch, Otto H., ‘Wille/Willensfreiheit III’, Theologische Realenzyklopädie 36 (2004) 76–97. Petri, Gottfried E., ‘Versuch einer Skitze über die Folgen der Reformation: erster Abschnitt; Folgen der Reformation für Religion, Sitten, Wissenschaft und bürgerliches Wesen unter der Protestanten’, in Keyser, Friedrich (ed.), Reformations Almanach für Luthers Verehrer auf das evangelische Jubeljahr 1817 (Erfurt: Uckermann, 1817) 145–98. Richards, Sarah, ‘Late Eighteenth-Century Prints in Leipzig’s Periodical Press: Cultural Transfer of the English Style’, in Kaenel, Philippe/Reichardt, Rolf (ed.), Interkulturelle Kommunikation in der europäischen Druckgraphik im 18. und 19. Jahrhundert / The European Print and Cultural Transfer in the 18th and 19th Centuries / Gravure et communication intellectuelle en Europe aux 18e et 19e siècles (Hildesheim/Zürich/New York: Georg Olms Verlag, 2007) 223–43. Rohls, Jan, Offenbarung, Vernunft und Religion (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2012).

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Representations between identities, languages and figures

Herman A. Speelman

The Eucharist as a mysterious representation of Christ

Introduction One of the classic examples of a symbol in the western world is the bread and wine in the sacrament of the Eucharist. It represents humankind’s struggle to attempt to deal with the invisible world. In this essay, we shall compare two figures, one Catholic and the other Protestant, namely Thomas à Kempis (1380–1471), a leading figure within the late medieval renewal movement of the devotio moderna, and John Calvin (1509–64), an influential person in the early modern Reformation movement. In particular, we shall compare Kempis’s 1441 Devota exhortatio ad sacram communionem to Calvin’s 1541 Petit traicté de la saincte cène on the subject of the Eucharist.1 At the time of Thomas, there were two forms of communion: an external communion, and an exclusively internal one. The former was called ‘sacramental communion’, in which one really partakes of the body and blood of Christ, usually at mass. Then there was also a ‘spiritual communion’, a purely internal act of faith without the real body and blood of Christ and independent of time and place. Wessel Gansfort (1419–89), a layman, humanist and representative of the devotio moderna, compared these two forms of communion and concluded that sacramental communion is of no use without spiritual communion, and that it can even lead to death if one partakes in an unworthy manner. Spiritual communion, on the other hand, always bears fruit and leads to life. Furthermore, 1 Over seventy French editions appearing from 1488 to 1600 of (parts of) Thomas’s La ymitacion Jhesus Christ, a book that consists of four tracts, including the Devota exhortatio ad sacram communionem, and between 1541 and 1562 eight editions of Calvin’s Petit traicté de la saincte cène de nostre Seigneur Jesus Christ, according to the list in Andrew Pettegree/Malcolm Walsby/Alexander Wilkinson (ed.), French Vernacular Books: Books Published in the French Language before 1601 (2 vols.; Leiden/Boston: Brill, 2007), vol. 2, 728–30; see also Francis M. Higman, Piety and the People Religious Printing in French 1511–1551 (Aldershot: Scolar Press, 1996).

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Gansfort held sacramental communion to depend upon circumstances, while spiritual communion can take place anywhere as long as one’s faith is sincere. As such, Wessel shows himself to be a proponent of spiritual communion.2 However, in what was originally the third book of the De imitatione Christi,3 Thomas exhorts his readers to participate in sacramental communion and, contrary to the usual custom, he tells them to do so frequently. A century later, Calvin would do the same under different circumstances. Their eucharistic spiritualities are characterised by the believer’s unification with Christ in communion. But what, according to Calvin, is the relationship between the partaking of the signs of the Eucharist and what communion really concerns, namely unification with Christ and its resulting fruits? We shall see that in the view of Thomas and Calvin there is no such thing as a Holy Communion without a bond to the God-man, Christ, neither can one partake of this communion without preparing for it in a worthy manner; nor, on the other hand, can one speak of communion without any effects. In Thomas’s treatise, these three main elements can be found in most of the eighteen chapters, while in the first of five chapters of his booklet Calvin treats, among other things, the effects of communion, union with Christ in the second, and, in chapter three, preparation for Holy Communion, while the last two chapters focus on the refutation of the doctrine of the established church and of the other Reformers. In what follows we shall therefore reflect on the unification which is effected with Christ through communion; the necessity for each person to prepare for this holy unification in a worthy manner; and the fruits of Holy Communion. First, however, we shall address the tension between the sign and the signified in the Eucharist. At the very end of this essay, we shall also offer some remarks on the comparison between Thomas’s and Calvin’s eucharistic treatises.

2 Wessel Gansfort, Tractatus de oratione et modo orandi, edited by Gansfort, Johan (Zwolle: Simon Corver, ca. 1521), fol. lxxii–v and lxxv–r; see Regnerus R. Post, The Modern Devotion. Confrontation with Reformation and Humanism (Leiden: Brill, 1968), 537–41. 3 Imitatio and imitari can be understood in English as ‘representation’ and ‘to represent’. The terms are commonly translated as ‘imitation’ and ‘to imitate’, but it is important to recognise that it is not a matter of a slavish, required, or external imitation. What Thomas means is the free, personal, and internal representation of the image of the invisible God. In this work Thomas accordingly treats the representation of Christ both in communion and in the communicant.

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The relationship between sign and signification: a comparison with Zwingli and Luther In the Marburg Colloquy of 1529, the Reformers Luther and Zwingli were unable to understand each other on the subject of Holy Communion. In this discussion, on which Lee Palmer Wandel has written an insightful article, a key element was constituted by the significance of the body, and thus of the signs. For Luther, in contrast to Zwingli, Christ’s body could not be substantially the same as the human body, since that would make God respect the rules of ‘mathematics’ (physics). Although Zwingli on his part did understand Christ’s body to be in heaven, he argued that the absence of his body in the Eucharist did not mean that the Eucharist lacked a somatic dimension. Accordingly, he said to Luther: ‘We speak also of a “sacramental” presence of Christ’s body, and mean with it, that the body of Christ is “representative” in the Supper’.4 For Zwingli images and visible things become idols in the mind of man, in a psychological sense. Specific representations in a complex interplay between matter and mind, not matter itself, turn things into idols. The transformation of an image or sign operates at the psychological and emotional level, as he explained in Article 20 of the Sixty-Seven Theses: human beings ‘put their trust in images’, that is, ‘they entrust something to the images’.5 This helps us to gain a better understanding of the way Zwingli understood Christ’s ‘representative’ presence. According to him, Christ is not present corporeally; only the bread is substantially present. If we follow Zwingli’s sense of human psychology, the connection between the bread and Christ’s body takes place in the mind, and that connection is not simply ‘spiritual’ or ‘psychological’ but visceral. Human beings put their trust in representations of what they themselves each value as good. Once again he explains in Article 20: ‘[E]verything in which man places his trust is for him God’.6 The value does not exist 4 Zwingli and Luther had different conceptions of the body of Christ, which prevented them from understanding each other at Marburg. Each followed a different concept of physics and metaphysics. Trained as a humanist, Zwingli stated in the course of the debates: ‘It is wonderfully consoling to me, each time I think of it: Christ had flesh as I do’, while Luther with his more mystical physics departed from a different notion of the relationship between matter and divine agency and argued that Christ’s body could be ‘similar’ to ours in ‘form’, but not in ‘power’. See Walther Köhler, Das Marburger Religionsgespräch 1529: Versuch einer Rekonstruktion (Leipzig: Heinsius, 1929), 14, 29–30; Lee P. Wandel, ‘The Body of Christ at Marburg, 1529’, in Melion, Walter/Falkenburg, Reindert (ed.), Image and Imagination of the Religious Self in Late Medieval and Early Modern Europe (Turnhout: Brepols, 2007) 195–213. 5 Huldrych Zwingli, Huldreich Zwinglis sämtliche Werke, edited by Egli, Emil/Finsler, Georg (14 vols.; Berlin: Schwetschke, Leipzig: Heinsius Nachfolger and Zürich: Berichthaus, 1905–59), vol. 2 (1908), 218 = Huldrych Zwingli, Schriften, edited by Brunnschweiler, Thomas/Lutz, Samuel/Bächtold, Hans U. (4 vols.; Zürich: Theologischer Verlag, 1995), vol. 2, 255f. 6 Zwingli, Huldreich Zwinglis sämtliche Werke, vol. 2, 219 = Zwingli, Schriften, 256.

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independently in the thing itself. For those who look to God through the bread, this bread is more than mere matter. It is a material site for a connection to Christ’s body, through a complex cognitive process. What matters for Zwingli is that we trust in God. More in line with Luther, for Calvin the eating of the sacramental bread as a sign is not enough. In contrast to Zwingli, Calvin emphasises that the signs in Holy Communion are not naked figures: ‘[T]he internal substance of the sacrament is joined with the visible signs; and as the bread is distributed by hand, so the body of Christ is communicated to us, so that we are made participants in it […] Jesus Christ gives us in the Supper the proper substance of his body and blood, so that we may possess him fully’ (§17).7 In communion, what is consumed is an internal, spiritual substance, because the act of eating this bread of communion is about more than just believing. ‘For as it is eating bread, not looking at it, which gives nourishment to the body, so must the soul truly be made a participant in Christ, so as to be sustained by him in eternal life. However, we confess that this eating does not occur except by faith’.8 On the one hand, Holy Communion is not an ‘empty sign’ which may transmit a message or form an alternative for the abandoned worship of images, as in the doctrine of transubstantiation. Calvin clearly states: ‘In Holy Communion, the Lord gives us what it depicts, and thus we truly receive the body and blood of Jesus Christ’ (§52). On the other hand, he does not explain how the Eucharist mediates between sign and signified, reality and faith. Calvin, like Erasmus, chose to describe Christ’s presence in Holy Communion as a ‘spiritual’ communion; like Zwingli, he opposed a localised presence; and, in the spirit of Luther, he used the word ‘substantial’. A key message in Calvin’s treatise is that the substance of Holy Communion consists in Christ (§§11, 12, 15, 17, 18, 30, 51, 60). Calvin likes to call communion a mystery, whose main goal is

7 John Calvin, Three French Treatises, edited by Higman, Francis M. (London/New York: Atlone Press, 1970) [=TFT], 107f (§17). The paragraph division is taken over from John Calvin, Short Treatise on the Holy Supper of our Lord Jesus Christ, in Calvin, John, Tracts and Treatises, edited by Beveridge, Henry (3 vols.; Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1958) [= TT] vol. 2, 163–98; other critical texts can be found in John Calvin, Ioannis Calvini opera quae supersunt omnia, edited by Baum, Johann W./Cunitz, August E./Reuss, Eduard W.E. (59 vols.; Brunswick: C.A. Schwetschke, 1863–1900) [= CO 1–59], vol. 5, 433–60; John Calvin, Joannis Calvini opera selecta, edited by Barth, Peter/Niesel, Wilhelm (5 vols.; Munich: C. Kaiser, 1926–36) [= OS], vol. 1, 503–30; and with an accompanying German translation in John Calvin, Calvin-Studienausgabe, edited by Busch, Eberhard/Freudenberg, Matthias/Heron, Alasdair (8 vols.; Neukirchen: Neukirchen-Vluyn, 1994–2011) [= CStA], vol. 1/2, 442–93. 8 John Calvin, Institution de la religion chrétienne, edited by Millet, Olivier (2 vols.; Genève: Droz, 2008) [= IRC], 1346–7 = John Calvin, Institutes of the Christian Religion. 1541 French Edition, edited by McKee, Elsie A. (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2009), 553.

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‘that we live in Christ and He in us’, a biblical reference which Thomas also cites in the very first chapter of his work. It is well-known that Calvin’s eucharistic theology sought out a middle ground between symbolism and realism, a position generally known as ‘symbolic’ or ‘realistic instrumentalism’. I myself would prefer to call it ‘spiritually substantial’. Since ‘a miraculous power’ is able to ‘connect that which is physically separated’, Calvin ends his pamphlet by stating that, through the power of the Holy Spirit as the ‘connector’ (lien), a substantial unification with Christ’s body and blood is realised in the Eucharist. In order to express the manner in which sacraments effect the conveyance of grace, one can use the language of representation and signification. Calvin, like many of his and our contemporaries, describes the sacraments as instruments that maintain the faith of believers and help to confirm their union with Jesus Christ. He describes a sacrament as ‘an outward attestation of the grace of God which represents to us by a visible sign spiritual things in order to imprint the promises of God more firmly in our hearts and make us more certain of them’.9 In using this distinction between visible signs and the invisible realities to which these signs refer, Calvin places himself in a tradition of interpretation that goes back to Augustine.10 In the ninth century, during the first controversy over the Holy Supper, Ratramnus comments that for Augustine sacramentum already stood for the earthly form while the res corresponded to the Platonic intelligible idea or reality.11 Ratramnus presupposes the Platonic concept of participation, namely that sensible things are the image of the intelligible reality and that they are what they are through their participation in that intelligible reality. Using this framework of sign and what it represents, Ratramnus depicts Christ as being present in the Eucharist according to the Platonic mode of an idea. In this way he could at once hold on to the real presence and yet deny the identity of the eucharistic body of Christ with the historical body of Christ. This is very similar to the framework we encounter in Calvin.

9 CO 6, 111. 10 Robert A. Markus, ‘St. Augustine on Signs’, in Markus, Robert A. (ed.), Augustine: A Collection of Critical Essays (Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1972) 61–91. 11 For his teacher Paschasius, this figura was only an external enclosure for the true flesh and blood of Christ. This realistic interpretation in the end carried the day. Ratramnus had a spiritual understanding of the ‘body’. His work was rediscovered in 1526 and published in Geneva in 1541. See Arnold Angenendt, Geschichte der Religiosität im Mittelalter (Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, 22005), 503 and Kilian McDonnell, John Calvin, the Church, and the Eucharist (Princeton: University Press, 1967), 50ff.

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In his treatise, Thomas, who speaks positively about the position of the celebrating priest and the dedication of the mass, does not depart from the church guidelines on the subject, while Calvin is more critical than he is of established church doctrine on the sacrifice of the mass (§§33–8) and transubstantiation (§§39–40). At the same time, both authors reveal themselves to be somewhat in line with Ratramnus and Berengarius:12 what binds them above all is their late medieval eucharistic view of piety, in which a worthy preparation for communion and its fruits holds an important place, and in which the encounter with Christ stands central. As Thomas puts it: ‘Give me Yourself – it is enough; for without You there is no consolation. Without You I cannot exist, without Your visitation I cannot live. I must often come to You, therefore, and receive the strength of my salvation lest, deprived of this heavenly food, I grow weak on the way’13 (cf. §§4, 11 etc.). In the Short Treatise on the Holy Supper Calvin acknowledges his debt to Augustine for the distinction between visible sign (signum) and invisible matter, reality and truth of the sacrament (res) as the two constituent elements given in the Supper.14 For Calvin the real matter of the Eucharist is something incorporeal, invisible, mysterious: ‘It is a spiritual mystery, which cannot be seen by the eye, nor comprehended by the human understanding. It is therefore figured by visible signs, as our infirmity requires’ (§15). Because this divine reality goes beyond the ability of our minds to comprehend, God uses physical signs as instruments through which to communicate a mysterious reality to us. By making a distinction between the thing and what it represents, Calvin in no way seeks to diminish the communication of the body which is offered to believers in the Eucharist: ‘Now, if it be asked nevertheless we should reply that the bread and the wine are visible signs, which represent to us the body and the blood; but that the name and title of body and blood is attributed to them, because they are as instruments by which our Lord Jesus Christ distributes them to us’ (§14). Since the earthly sign of the sacrament signifies a transcendent world, Calvin wants to distinguish clearly between the spiritual and the material. In line with this, Calvin reacted against the generally accepted popular piety of his time 12 Herman A. Speelman, Biechten bij Calvijn: Over het geheim van heilig communiceren (Heerenveen: Groen, 2010), 378ff. 13 Chapter 3, verse 18 (hereafter 3, 18) = Thomas à Kempis, Imitatio Christi, in Thomas à Kempis, Thomae Hemerken a Kempis, Canonici regularis ordinis S. Augustini, Opera Omnia, edited by Pohl, Michael J. (7 vols.; Freiburg i.B.: Herder, 1902–22) [= OO] vol. 2 (1904), 3–263, on 102. Unless otherwise noted, the parenthetical references to Thomas are taken from Book 4 (Devota exhortatio ad sacram communionem) of his De imitatione Christi, in OO 2, 89–138. Thomas’s treatise takes the form of a dialogue or antiphon in which Christ as the Loved One (dilectus) invites the student (discipulus) to enjoy the sacrament of his holy body. 14 TFT, 107 (§15) = OS 1, 509. Cf. La forme de prières, in OS 2, 43–4.

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whereby the signs change into what they represent and become the real matter of the Eucharist, that is, the concept of a local presence of Christ’s body and blood.15 The analogy between the visible, material sign and the invisible, spiritual reality of the sacrament is threatened when the sign and its referent are unequivocally and unambiguously identified, as when the consecrated host is said to be the actual body of Christ. Sign and reality have to be distinguished: ‘But we likewise add that the sacraments of the Lord ought not and cannot at all be separated from their reality and substance. To distinguish them so that they be not confused is not only good and reasonable but wholly necessary. But to divide them so as to set them up the one without the other is absurd’ (§15).16 The material signs of bread and wine do not lose their corporal, earthly reality when they exercise their significative function. Even in so holy a function they remain bound to the transitory world. More than this, for Calvin it is only on condition that they remain bread and wine that they are able to signify the spiritual heavenly reality. He who would destroy the materiality of the bread in its significative function would destroy the communion and participation of which it is a sign. This is one of the reasons why Calvin rejects transubstantiation: it denies the permanent substance of bread and wine and, therefore, denies their function of signifying the spiritual reality. Christ comes to us in the sacrament, says Calvin, as in a mirror: ‘Now our heavenly Father, to succour us from it, gives us the Supper as a mirror in which we contemplate our Lord Jesus Christ crucified to abolish our faults and offences, and raised to deliver us from corruption and death, and restoring us to a heavenly immortality’ (§8). This theme is part of a larger complex for Calvin, given numerous dangers like praying to, or worshipping, idols. On the one hand, for him the dilemma is that we neither tie the grace of God to the sacraments, nor transfer to them the work and influence of the Holy Spirit. It is not the sacraments’ ‘work’ but God in them! ‘We refer the whole efficacy to the Spirit of God’. On the other hand, the sacraments are the instruments of God’s grace, and their proper use can be effectual.17 Christological considerations, together with the doctrine of Christ’s ascension, were adduced as impediments to the assertion that Christ was present bodily in the meal.18 We short-change Christ if we lower him to perishable elements. But the bread should also retain its true substance in order to be able to point to the other reality.19 15 16 17 18

TFT, 106f = OS 1, 508. Cf. IRC, 1346f. TFT, 107 = OS 1, 509. See Mutual Consent of the Churches of Zurich and Geneva, in TT 2, 199–244, on 230. TFT, 120f (§40f) = OS 1, 521f. On this point Calvin very closely followed his Reformed Swiss predecessors Zwingli, Oecolampadius, and, among the French, Farel and Marcourt. 19 ‘I only say that the nature of the sacrament requires that the material bread remain as visible

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In what sense, then, can it be said that we eat and drink the body and blood of Christ? Calvin says that it is necessary for our salvation that we possess him in this way, as he makes himself ours, and we receive him as nourishment for eternal life.20 He adds the reality of himself to the bread and wine. How does this occur, then, if his body is in heaven and we are still on earth? He does it by raising our minds to heaven to obtain the reality of the signs.21 The message is clear: Christ cannot be conceived of as locally present in the Supper, and the bread and wine are signs referring us to the body and blood of Christ in heaven. The words ‘bread’ and ‘body’ function in the words of institution: ‘The name body of Jesus Christ is transferred to the bread, as it is the sacrament and figure of it’, explains Calvin (§14). In this way, the image of the bread is used in communion to signify another reality. There is, therefore, a relationship of signification between the sign and the thing signified. We might think here of the example of the dove, an image Calvin uses as a visible sign of the Spirit.22 Not only was John the Baptist certain that the Holy Spirit was present when he saw the dove, but we too ‘truly receive in the Supper the body and blood of Christ’. If he gave us only bread and wine, the institution of Holy Communion would be a deception.23 The sacrament is not a sign alone, but ‘is combined with the reality and substance’ (§14). There does, however, remain a paradox in the position Calvin assumes. On the one hand, he is insistent that a sign is nothing but itself; on the other hand, he emphasises our need for signs as vehicles to transport our minds to see things we otherwise could not perceive. While the Holy Spirit moves the heart and enlightens the mind directly, the sacraments, as secondary instruments, are used by God because our weakness needs them as mirrors in which we may see heavenly things in a familiar and earthly way, for otherwise we could not reach them in our understanding.24 Yet to what extent do the views of Calvin and Thomas on the Eucharist as an instrument for communion with Christ agree, as we find them in their respective treatises on the Eucharist?

20 21 22 23 24

sign of the body. For it is a general rule for all sacraments that the signs which we see have some correspondence with the spiritual things they symbolize. As then at baptism we have assurance of internal washing when the water is given us for attestation to cleanse our bodily defilements, so in the Supper there must be material bread, to testify to us that the body of Christ is our food. For otherwise what meaning could there be in whiteness symbolizing it for us?’, in TFT, 119f (§39f) = OS 1, 520f. TFT, 102f (§§5, 6, 9 etc.). See Catechism of the Church of Geneva, in TT 2, 37–94, on 91 (answer 355). TFT, 106 (§14) = OS 1, 509. See also John Calvin, Institutes of the Christian Religion, edited by McNeill, John T./Battles, Ford L. (2 vols.; Louisville/London: Westminster Press, 1960) [= Inst.], 4.17.21. TFT, 107f (§§15, 17) = OS 1, 508f. See TT 2, 84 (answers 312–14), 104 (§8) = OS 1, 506.

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The communal unification with Christ Thomas and Calvin both consider unification with Christ a central characteristic of eucharistic piety. But they each do so in their own way.25 Calvin was a second-generation Reformer, who followed Zwingli in simplifying the liturgy (or liturgical acts) and the interiors of the places of worship,26 and also in some aspects of his theology of the Holy Supper. For example, Calvin also taught that Christ’s natural body ascended into heaven and stayed there. If this spatial separation of sign and thing signified is not emphasised, the result will be idolatry. Calvin also spoke about a spiritual presence of Christ in the Supper, but not in a psychological sense. In the Eucharist, Christ offers his own body and blood to the communicant in a very mysterious way through the power of the Holy Spirit and makes believers real participants in his substance. ‘How this is done, some may deduce better and explain more clearly than others’, says Calvin, ‘we must hold that this sacred mystery is accomplished by the secret and miraculous virtue of God, and that the Spirit of God is the bond of participation, for which reason it is called spiritual’ (§60). Beginning in about the year 1200, two developments brought about a new form of piety, namely ‘eucharistic piety’.27 Theology came to be increasingly detailed in its description of the actual presence of Christ in the sacrament. The liturgy saw the introduction of the elevation of the host in the mass, in which the priest lifted the consecrated wafer above his head so that the people could worship Christ. Lateran IV declared the doctrine of transubstantiation, according to which bread and wine actually change into the body of Christ. It held that the change nevertheless cannot be witnessed by the senses, since the accidental properties of the bread and wine (accidentia) such as colour, taste and dimension do not change. This new, eucharistically oriented piety was also cultivated in the eleventh

25 Charles M.A. Caspers ‘Thomas von Kempen und die Kommunion. Die Stellung des vieren (dritten) Buches der “Imitatio” innerhalb der spätmittelalterlichen und späteren eucharistischen Frömmigkeit’, in Bodemann, Ulrike/Saubach, Nikolaus (ed.), Aus dem Winkel in die Welt. Die Bücher des Thomas von Kempen und ihre Schicksale (Frankfurt a.M.: Lang, 2006) 158–72, on 159. 26 See, for example, the interior of St Peter’s Cathedral in Geneva (fig. 111). Luther, in contrast, found all matter (e. g. images, bells, liturgical vestments, church decorations, ancient lights, and the like) unimportant. He therefore opposed the iconoclasts in Wittenberg. See Vom Abendmahl Christi, Bekenntnis, published in 1528, in Martin Luther, Luthers Werke in Auswahl, edited by Clemen, Otto K. (8 vols.; Berlin/Bonn: De Gruyter, 1950–5), vol. 3, 514. 27 Peter Browe, Die verehrung der Eucharistie im Mittelalter (München: Max Hueber, 1933); Charles M.A. Caspers, ‘Meum summum desiderium est te habere. De Eucharistie als sacrament van de godsontmoeting voor alle gelovigen, ca. 1200–ca. 1500’, Ons Geestelijk Erf 70 (1996) 193–215.

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century among the Cistercians by uniting the focus on Christ with a desire to unite with him on a spiritual level.28 In late medieval religion, the main goal of religion was eventual unification with God the Father after death, but during this earthly life a certain degree of unification could be reached through communion. Followers of Geert Groote, who saw in Christ the invisible head of his visible body the church, experienced this unification mainly internally.29 According to scholastic theology, communion was a ‘sacramental unification’ with Christ – not an immediate unification with God, but a mediated one. Immediate unification would be possible only in heaven.30 In this way, there was an upper limit to the degree of mystical unification during communion.31 In Thomas’s Devout Exhortation to the Holy Communion, sacramental unification is both mediated and (quasi) immediate. In Chapter 3, on frequent communion, the student says that unification with God is incomplete because ‘[t]his, indeed, is the one chief consolation of the faithful soul when separated32 from You by mortality, that often mindful of her God, she receives her Beloved with devout recollection’ (3, 18). And in Chapter 11, we read: For, hidden though You are beneath another form, I have You truly present in the Sacrament. My eyes could not bear to behold You in Your own divine brightness, nor could the whole world stand in the splendour of the glory of Your majesty. In veiling Yourself in the Sacrament, therefore, You have regard for my weakness. In truth, I possess and adore Him Whom the angels adore in heaven – I as yet by faith, they face to face unveiled. I must be content with the light of the true faith and walk in it until the day of eternal brightness dawns and the shadow of figures passes away (11, 5–9).

A change does follow, however. The Beloved is not refuted, but is told to make a ‘big, well-stocked dining room’ of his heart (12, 3; cf. Rev 3:20). We belong together, give yourself to me: ‘I am He to Whom you should give yourself entirely,

28 The commentaries of St Bernard of Clairvaux (d. 1153) and William of Saint-Thierry (d. 1149) on the Song of Solomon ushered in the so-called ‘bridal mysticism’. 29 As a reaction to the division of the church following the Western Schism, Geert Groote in his days saw a threat especially for the internal bond with Christ, and that while in his view the unity of the church is rooted precisely in every believer’s union with Christ. See Rudolf van Dijk, Twaalf kapittels over ontstaan, bloei en doorwerking van de Moderne Devotie, edited by Caspers, Charles M.A./Hofman, Rijcklof (Hilversum: Verloren, 2012), 263. 30 Heinrich Denzinger, Enchiridion symbolorum definitionum et declarationum de rebus fidei et morum. Kompendium der Glaubensbekenntnisse und kirchlichen Lehrentscheidungen, edited by Hünermann, Peter/Hoping, Helmut (Freiburg: Herder, 2001), 406–7 (no. 1000). 31 The Brabant mystic Jan van Ruusbroec argued that unification with God in communion does not have the perfection it will have in heaven. See Caspers, ‘Thomas von Kempen und die Kommunion’, 166. 32 Peregrinatur; cf. 2 Cor 5:6f.

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that from now on you may live, not in yourself, but in Me, with all cares cast away’ (12, 23). The depiction of a (quasi) immediate or mystical unification with God returns later in the chapter on the desire to become one with Christ in the sacrament. Here the prayer evolves into a eulogy. First he begs to be completely united with Christ (13, 2–5), then he praises God’s goodness which feeds him and gives him joy (13, 6–11), to conclude with a wish that the unification might never end: ‘There is nothing I can give more pleasing than to offer my heart completely to my God, uniting it closely with His. Then shall all my inner self be glad when my soul is perfectly united with God. Then will He say to me: “If you will be with Me, I will be with you”. And I will answer Him: “Deign, O Lord, to remain with me. I will gladly be with You. This is my one desire, that my heart may be united with You”’ (13, 13–19). Towards the end of the treatise, the student expresses the need to continue uniting oneself with Christ even more urgently: ‘From this moment to all eternity do You alone grow sweet to me, for You alone are my food and drink, my love and my joy, my sweetness and my total good. Let Your presence wholly inflame me, consume and transform me into Yourself, that I may become one spirit with You by the grace of inward union and by the melting power of Your ardent love. Suffer me not to go from You fasting and thirsty, but deal with me mercifully’ (16, 9–11). For Calvin, a melting together or unification takes place in the sacrament, wherein one dissolves into the other and the believing participant ceases to live independently. In his form for the Holy Supper (La manière de célébrer la cène), which he wrote shortly after the treatise, Calvin writes repeatedly: the communicant ‘lives in Me, as I live in him’.33 Our soul must be ready, ‘fuelled by its substance and made alive when they exalted above all earthly things reach heaven [attaindre iusque au Ciel] and enter into the kingdom of God [entrer au Royaulme de Dieu], where he lives’.34 Seen from this point of view, this communion with Jesus Christ does not take place on earth but in heaven. The food and drink of the bread and wine are also designed to move towards the sky and to enter into God’s kingdom.35 Through the eating and drinking of His body and blood, the participants in communion receive the whole Christ and have a part in His death and resurrection for the comfort of forgiveness of sins and certainty of eternal life. The

33 La manière de célébrer la cène, in CO 6, 193–201 = CStA 2, 194–214. Cf. John 6:56. 34 CO 6, 200 = CStA 2, 210. Cf. Marcel Royannez, ‘L’eucharistie chez les évangéliques et les premiers réformés français (1522–1546)’, Bulletin. Études, Documents, Chronique littéraire 125 (1979) 548–76, on 575. 35 See also Calvin’s reference to the sursum corda in his small catechism of 1537; for ‘our eyes, formerly glued to earth’, are no longer directed to ourselves but heavenward (OS 1, 382, art. 7).

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lines of connection that exist between heaven and earth and between the visible and the invisible world are embodied, signified and sealed in the sacrament. It is clear that for both Thomas and Calvin unification with Christ is essential to the Lord’s Supper.36 The communion, other than its preparation, is purely a divine act, in which humans only participate passively. Believers intensely desire unification with Christ and want to keep this in their life. It is a wondrous meal in which not only is the food different from our normal food, but the believer also undergoes, and in fact is also changed by, it. We become like Christ, one with Him, without ceasing to exist ourselves.37 In his description of the goal and meaning of the Holy Supper, Calvin, like Thomas, assumes a standpoint midway between his contemporaries, disapproving of the two more extreme solutions. For example, in a response to the question of what happens in the sacrament and how it takes place, Calvin on the one hand points to the possibility that the signs of bread and wine are identified with the body and blood of Christ, as the papal theologians and Lutherans teach. On the other hand, he wants to exclude the possibility that the signs are empty. The bread, he says, is called ‘body,’ not just because the sign ‘represents the body of Christ’, but also because it offers us the body of Christ (§15). He repeats that we should maintain as certain ‘that the Lord gives us in the Holy Communion that what he depicts in it, and that in this way, we truly receive the body and blood of Jesus Christ’ (§52). To prevent the sacrament from remaining limited to the external and material and to see it as something human, Calvin emphatically demands that believers should pay attention to the mystical unification with Christ, and for this reason he prefers to use the Greek word mysterion.38 With this, Calvin rejects the sacramental realism of Luther and the papal teachers, who explain the miracle too extensively, but also against the opinion of Zwingli, for whom the sacrament is restricted to symbolism.

36 The German literary historian Kurt Ruh, who has written a standard work on the history of western mysticism, concluded: ‘Die Eucharistie ist jedenfalls für Thomas und die Devotio Moderna schlechthin die eigentliche und wesentliche Vereinigung mit Christus […] Es ist in der Tat die Eucharistie, die die mystische unio vertritt’, in Kurt Ruh, Geschichte der abendländischen Mystik (4 vols.; München: Beck, 1999), vol. 4, 194. 37 In 1523 Zwingli – referring to John 6:44 and Gal 2:20 – posited that man ‘is attracted by God’s Spirit to Him and changed into Him’ also in the body (‘Deinde per Spiritum Dei in Deum trahuntur et veluti transformantur’). See Zwingli, Huldreich Zwinglis sämtliche Werke, vol. 2, 72, thesis 13. For Augustine’s view, see n. 87. 38 IRC 2, 1348. See Marianne Carbonnier-Burkard, ‘Consensus et différend dans le Petit traité de la sante cène’, in Arnold, Matthieu (ed.), Jean Calvin: les années strasbourgeoises (1538–1541) (Strasbourg: Presses Universitaires de Strasbourg, 2010) 223–49, on 236, n. 49.

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The sacrament is like a tool for Calvin: the visible, external aspects and the inward, invisible aspects of the sacrament should be distinguished, but it is impossible to separate them. He repeatedly says that God works through the external signs in an invisible way. He writes, for example, that we should not think that the Lord only warns us through external signs and enflames our hearts, for the main message is that he works in us through his Holy Spirit (§19). The external signs function as tools which are used by the Sprit at the very moment when they are consumed by the believer.39 The miracle of the invisible unification with Christ is ‘an unintelligible mystery’ which needs to be visualised to support our faith, but exceeds human understanding.40 ‘As the bread is given in the hand’, Calvin writes, ‘so the body of Christ is communicated to us, so that we will take part in him’. Christ’s sacrifice of His body and blood does not depend upon faith, but its reception does. That Christ offers himself in the sacrament is one thing, that we truly receive him is another. We have then to confess that if the representation which God grants in the Supper is veracious, the internal substance of the sacrament is joined with the visible signs; and as the bread is distributed by hand, so the body of Christ is communicated to us, so that we are made partakers of it. […] Thus, as a brief definition of this benefit of the Supper, we may say that Jesus Christ is there offered to us that we may possess him, and in him all the fullness of his gifts which we can desire; and that in this we have great assistance in confirming our conscience in the faith which we ought to have in him (§17).

Thomas and Calvin thus show themselves in many respects to hold similar positions in their treatises. For both men it was clear that God uses the sacrament as an instrument to, as Calvin put it, ‘provide inward care’ (intérieurement) (§§17, 19). When Calvin calls the elements in communion ‘visible words’ (verba visibilia) in which the promises of the gospel, Christ’s sacrifice on the cross and his resurrection are depicted, he assumes with Augustine that words and things are both capable of signification.41 Knowledge comes to us in two kinds: that which is

39 Calvin scholars generally agree that Calvin was interested above all in practice; in that line it has become common to speak of the ‘instrumental’ character of Calvin’s eucharistic theology. See, for example, Emidio Campi, ‘Consensus Tigurinus: Werden, Wertung und Wirkung’, in Campi, Emidio/Reich, Ruedi (ed.), Consensus Tigurinus: Heinrich Bullinger und Johannes Calvin über das Abendmahl (Zürich: TVZ, 2009) 9–41, on 16 and Eberhard Busch, Gotteserkenntnis und Menschlichkeit: Einsichten in die Theologie Johannes Calvins (Zürich: Theologischer Verlag Zürich, 2005), 127. 40 Inst. 4.17.1 = OS 5, 342 and OS 1, 118. Cf. Inst. 4.17.7 and 18. 41 Inst. 4.14.6; Calvin here refers to Augustine’s Tractates on the Gospel of John 80, §3, in Migne, Jacques-Paul (ed.), Patrologiae cursus completus. Series latina (MPL) (Paris: Garnier, 1844– 64), vol. 35 (1845).

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concerned with things and that which is concerned with words.42 For the medieval tradition to which Calvin was heir, the question of the Eucharist underlies all talk of images and sacraments. It is not simply a matter of whether a word signifies a thing or whether it has a real and effectual connection with the thing it signifies. There is also the issue of analogy. Created things that signify a divine reality with a real similarity between them were seen as holding the mind and heart of man in a complex relationship with the truths to which they pointed the believer and as instruments used by God to lead the believer to himself.43 It is in this tradition that Calvin stands as he describes the sign as an aid that points us directly to Christ.44 They help our weak understanding to grasp something of the mystery they signify.45 Thomas expresses himself somewhat in the spirit of the later Reformed tradition when he writes about sola gratia (12, 8–16; 15, 1), sola fide (18, 17–21) and the necessity of both Word and sacraments (11). A difference with Calvin is that Thomas acknowledges a nonsacramental, intimate, spiritual communion as a sacrament, although he prefers sacramental communion. For Calvin, the external-sacramental and inward-spiritual communion are two aspects of the same thing which are not to be had separately. Communion is in essence both an inward and outward event. If the two are disconnected, it would in theory be possible for the believing participant to have real communion with the body and blood of Christ, while his life would remain unchanged. This would be wrong.46 Both men agree that a worthy communion means becoming one with Christ. Christ offers himself, the participant receives him and offers himself with the goal of becoming more like Christ. For both, communion is a goal in and of itself as well as an instrument with long-term effects. Holy communion is for them both objective and subjective. That is why both devote so much attention in their treatises to the role of both Christ and the recipient.47 For Thomas and Calvin, it is certain that a Christian cannot live without communion with Christ in the Eucharist. It renews a believer and changes his 42 Desiderius Erasmus, ‘De ratione studii’, in Erasmus, Desiderius, Ausgewahlte Werke, edited by Holborn, Annemarie/Holborn, Hajo (Munich: Beck, 1933), 1f. 43 Gillian R. Evans, ‘Calvin on Signs: An Augustinian Dilemma’, Renaissance Studies 3/1 (1989) 35–45, on 38. 44 TT 2, 84 (answer 315). 45 TFT, 102f (§5) = OS 1, 505. 46 In order to express his disagreement, he applied this duality to the sacrament of penance. Following this same line of reasoning, it would then be possible to obtain two kinds of absolution, the one external and the other internal. In this way the visible sign and the thing signified would be separated from each other and the sacrament reduced to something purely external. See Inst. 4.19.16; OS 5, 450 = OS 1, 201. 47 Herman A. Speelman, Calvin and the Independence of the Church (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2014), 11–32.

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interaction with God and his fellow believers. Calvin describes the life-giving sacrament at the end of the treatise as a holy mystery in which God works through ‘a secret [secrette] and miraculous [vertu miraculeuse]’ power. And because the Spirit of God in this becoming one with Christ acts as the ‘connecting factor’ (lien), he also considers the participation in sacramental communion a matter of spiritual communion (§60).

The necessity of a worthy preparation for communion The importance of a recurring desire to join with Christ Calvin writes that people are unwilling to attend communion due to their own unworthiness or to that of others, as well as a lack of personal motivation (§§30– 2). However, once we have tasted just a little of the ‘sweetness’ of the heavenly bread, we will come to desire it more and more, and we will accept it every time it is offered to us (§32). A recurring and increasing desire for communion with Christ in the Eucharist is characteristic of Calvin’s thought, just as it is for Thomas (3, 4–5). According to Calvin, our soul is in constant need of bread from heaven, just as our body is in constant need of earthly food. It is clear to him that ‘it is the intention of our Lord that we participate in communion frequently; else, we will not fully know the blessings we are offered through it’ (§29; cf. 15, 13).48 It is very important to Calvin that we have a desire to strengthen our connection to Christ, and to be nourished by him. At the heavenly table, our existing relationship with Christ is strengthened and the promises of the gospel are sealed. It would be highly unfitting to attend if we do not dwell in the house of the Heavenly Father. Calvin also notes that we cannot truly be part of the body of Christ unless ‘the substance and the reality of communion’ have already been realised within us. It would be shameless to ‘call upon God as our father, if we are not members of Jesus Christ’. If we are, however, we will be all the more justified in attending.49 Calvin establishes a connection between the relation to God that the believer needs to have prior to attending, and the necessity of his desire to 48 The proposal Farel and Calvin made in January 1537 in the Articles Concerning the Organization of the Church and of Worship in Geneva to celebrate communion on a weekly basis was in line with Luther’s practice in Wittenberg. In the refugee church in Strasbourg, Calvin celebrated communion on a monthly basis, where every participant was required to make confession at the pastor’s manse prior to the celebration. 49 Cf. the beginning of Book 3 of the Institutes about ‘The Way in Which We Receive the Grace of Christ’: people stay outsiders ‘as long as Christ remains outside of us [extra nos est Christus] and we are separated from him’. Christ’s human nature remains useless and without any value as long as he does not become ours (nostrum fieri) and live in us (Inst. 3.1.1; OS 4, 1).

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maintain this relation. He concludes that for someone who ‘does not want to receive the Eucharist’, it is impossible to ‘pray to God’ (§30). It is also typical for Calvin that an existing relation with Christ is the basis of the Holy Communion; the receiver is not offered something new, but rather something he already has. The Lord’s Supper, to which God’s children are invited, represents a relationship with Christ; the believer is supposed to testify to this relationship openly and publicly, through frequent attendance at the Supper. All our meals refer to this one very special meal, in which a miraculous exchange takes place between Christ and the communicant.50 This, Calvin says, underlines the importance of this recurring meal. In order to remember Christ in this biblical sense, and to establish his presence in our lives, we need a prior connection to Him. In other words, Holy Communion stands for a relationship with God through Christ. With this point Calvin diverges from the doctrine which states that unbelievers receive the body and blood of Christ as well – the so-called manducatio impiorum.51 The connection with Christ is a gift of God, and it bears an implicit relationship to predestination:52 only the elect – that is, those who already possess Christ – receive Christ and his blessings at the Eucharist.53 This happens, after all, on the basis of an existing relation offered to the believer by God’s Spirit, who instils in the believer a desire for a stronger connection to the Other. 50 Martin Luther, Ein Sermon von dem hochwürdigen Sakrament des heiligen wahren Leichams Christi (1519), in Luther, Martin, D. Martin Luthers Werke: Kritische Gesamtausgabe (60 vols.; Weimar: Böhlau, 1883–1983) [= WA], vol. 2, 743f. Cf. Inst. 4.17.2: ‘[T]hat, by his descent to earth, he has prepared an ascent to heaven for us; that, by taking on our mortality, he has conferred his immortality upon us; that, accepting our weakness, he has strengthened us by his power; that, receiving our poverty unto himself, he has transferred his wealth to us; that, taking the weight of our iniquity upon himself (which oppressed us), he has clothed us with his righteousness’. Cf. OS 1, 137 (Institution de la religion chrétienne, 1536). 51 Because Calvin with his treatise intended not only to reveal his view on the Lord’s Supper but also to resolve existing conflicts, at certain points he avoids addressing certain sensitive issues. In his view unbelievers only receive the outward signs, and thus in communion receive neither Christ nor his benefits. See CO 1, 1015 (Calvin, Institution de la religion chrétienne, 1539). Later, in his 1559 Institution, Calvin would treat the manducatio impiorum at greater length, as well as the reception of Christ and redemption as a believing member of the body of Christ. See Ernst Bizer, Studien zur Geschichte des Abendmahlsstreits im 16. Jahrhundert (Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, 1972), 294–9 and Frank Ewerszumrode, Mysterium Christi spiritualis praesentia: Die Abendmahlslehre des Genfer Reformators Johannes Calvin aus römisch-katholischer Perspektive (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2012), 263–9. 52 In 1539 Calvin described being elected as being ‘a member of Christ’. See Wilhelm Neuser, ‘Predestinatie’, in Selderhuis, Herman J. (ed.), Calvijn Handboek (Kampen: Kok, 2008) 353–65 and Christian Link, Prädestination und Erwählung: Calvin-Studien (Neukirchen-Vluyn: Neukichener, 2009), 33–54. 53 ‘[W]e may say, that Jesus Christ is there offered to us in order that we may possess him, and in him all the fullness of grace which we can desire’ (§17). Cf. §§9, 13, 30, 50 etc.

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Thomas and Calvin both state that tepidity is the most dangerous reason why weak Christians postpone communion. In Chapter 14, Thomas advises to pray for a strong and loving desire; for this desire, too, is for God to give to us: Your mercy can give me the grace I long for and can visit me most graciously with fervour of soul according to Your good pleasure. For although I am not now inflamed with as great desire as those who are singularly devoted to You, yet by Your grace I long for this same great flame, praying and seeking a place among all such ardent lovers that I may be numbered among their holy company (14, 7–8; cf. 17, 2).

From the outset, Thomas deals with the reasons why people hesitate to participate in communion. He points out that man himself is never worthy enough for communion, but that in spite of his unworthiness, and thanks to God, he can nonetheless attend (2; 4; 14; 5, 1; 6–9). It is important, Thomas admits, for believers to be aware of their unworthiness, and to strive to be received and to become what is given. Nevertheless, weakness and unworthiness are in themselves no reason to forego communion. If we deign to belong to Christ, we approach him ‘with true remorse, if we aim to mirror our lives to the example of Jesus Christ’, Calvin says (§24). We need to realise that we are mortals for whom it is vital to receive the Holy Supper as a divine medicine. God has given it to us ‘to assist our weakness, to strengthen our faith, to augment our charity and to help us proceed in the sanctification of life’. Connected to this, Calvin deals with the excuses people make in order not to attend communion. Some people claim that they ‘lack faith’ or an ‘honourable life’. But, Calvin responds dismissively, we also do not refuse a medicine because we are ill: ‘The weakness of our faith that we feel in our hearts, and the defects in our lives should rather encourage us to attend, because it is an exceptionally useful way to amend them’ (§28). More than Luther and Zwingli, Calvin, in the spirit of Thomas, pointed to the importance of preparing for the Supper. He, too, refers to the threat of God’s judgement if we lack worthiness (§20).

Self-examination The correct course to follow, according to Calvin, is that people should test and examine themselves in preparation for the celebration (§§7, 8, 21–9),54 and that they allow themselves to be questioned by the church officers (§31). 54 Calvin saw the human conscience as the place where individuals share knowledge with God (con-scientia) and where they are placed directly before the judgement seat of God. Time and again there was the torment of being left with one’s own repentance. In the established church, one’s peace of mind was in the hands of the church, which governed these things. At

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By emphasising the role of the communicant, Calvin gives personal preparation for the Lord’s Supper a prominent place in his reflection from his Strasbourg period. The communicant was expected to examine whether and to what extent he had succeeded in renouncing himself and had turned in obedience to God’s law. For true repentance and true faith in our Lord Jesus Christ are intertwined to such an extent that one cannot exist without the other: Now to pollute and contaminate what God has so sanctified is intolerable sacrilege. It is, then, not without reason that Paul passes such grave condemnation on those who take it unworthily. For if there is nothing in heaven or earth of greater value and dignity than the body and blood of our Lord, it is no small fault to take it inconsiderately and without being well prepared. Therefore he exhorts us to examine ourselves well, in order to use it properly. When we understand what kind of examination this should be, we shall know the use for which we seek. […] In following it, we have to examine whether we have a true repentance in ourselves and a true faith in our Lord Jesus Christ. These two things are so joined that the one cannot stand without the other. […] Moreover, it is to be noted that we cannot desire Jesus Christ without aspiring to the righteousness of God, which consists in self-denial and obedience to his will. For it is absurd to pretend to be of the body of Christ while we abandon ourselves to all licence and lead a dissolute life.55

In the Reformed liturgy, Calvin foresaw a central place for the traditional early Christian’s call to pray to lift up one’s heart to heaven.56 For we should not direct our attention to the earthly and visible elements and worship Christ as if he were contained in the bread and wine. Rather, we look upward to Christ who is seated at the right hand of God in heaven. Calvin repeats the liturgical call to elevate our hearts – the so-called sursum corda – multiple times (§§42, 52, 60). It is an act that seemingly proceeds from the believer, but is actually from God.57 We should ‘shut out all carnal fancies, raise our hearts on high to heaven, not thinking that our Lord Jesus Christ is so abased as to be enclosed under any corruptible elements’, Calvin repeatedly points out in the treatise (§60). As our bodies need to be nourished with bread and wine, so are our souls, through God’s caring paternal benevolence, nourished in communion with the the same time, Calvin maintained that a continuous battle in conscience and in faith was characteristic of the pious life (Inst. 3.4.17). Cf. Inst. 3.2.17 (Institution de la religion chrétienne, 1539). See William J. Bouwsma, John Calvin: A Sixteenth-Century Portrait (Oxford/ New York: Oxford University Press, 1988), 56f. 55 TFT, 109–11 = §§20–4. 56 The classical function of the sursum corda in the liturgy is to call the people to prayer. See in Thomas’s treatise the following prayer, for example: ‘Raise my heart to You in heaven and suffer me not to wander on earth’ (16, 8). See also De elevatione mentis, in OO 2, 397–418. 57 For Calvin, sacramental reality has a Christological and a pneumatological side to it, although he does not distinguish precisely between the presence of Christ and the Spirit in the Lord’s Supper. It is a dynamic event. This dynamic can be seen also in the liturgy in the call to lift our hearts up to Christ in heaven on the one hand, and the épiclèse (i. e. the prayer for the presence of the Spirit in communion) on the other.

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true body and blood of Christ. ‘It is very true that we have it as evidence of his fatherly goodness in maintaining us as far as the body is concerned, seeing that we participate in all the good things which with his blessing he gives us’.58

A crucified life of self-hate In opposing the externalisation of the ‘satisfaction of works’ (satisfactio operum) with justification through the satisfaction earned by Christ alone, the Reformers considered good works nothing but the fruit of faith. They closely connected their ‘theology of the cross’ with late medieval and early modern anthropology and with the sacraments, including confession and communion, as did Thomas, who spoke about walking on The Royal Road of the Holy Cross.59 From the eleventh and twelfth centuries on, inner conversion (conversio) to God came to play an ever greater role in personal piety. Here we need only think of Bernard of Clairvaux (1090–1153). According to Bernard, the virtue of humility means ‘that, through true self-knowledge, humans come to consider themselves as worthless’.60 Geiler von Kaisersberg, a preacher who was active in Strasbourg from 1478 and who has been described as a ‘German Savonarola,’ claimed that ‘the whole life of a Christian consists of nothing other than a cross’.61 In late medieval piety and theology, then, we see the sources not only of Luther’s view of the religious life as a continuous penance but also of his theology of the cross – even if he gave both these concepts a twist of his own by calling the Christian life a penitent, crucified life. Thomas à Kempis formulated it like this: ‘The more recollected a man is, and the more simple of heart [interius simplificatus] he becomes, the easier he understands sublime things, for he receives the light of knowledge from above’.62 True Christians ought to be intrinsically motivated, out of their love for God and his justice, to share in the treasures and gifts of Christ as they are worked by the Holy Spirit. In such a context the administration of the Word, as well as the

58 TFT, 101ff = §§3, 9, 13, 17, 30, 50. Cf. OO 2, 4.11.120. 59 See OO 2, 2.12. 60 Bernard of Clairvaux, ‘Liber de gradibus humilitatis et superbiae’, in Bernard of Clairvaux, Sancti Bernardi Opera, edited by Leclercq, Jean/Rochais, Henri (8 vols.; Roma: Editiones Cistercienses, 1957–77) vol. 3 Tractatus et opuscula (1963), 2–60. 61 Reinhold Seeberg, Lehrbuch der Dogmengeschichte (4 vols., Leipzig: A. Deichert, 41920–33), vol. 3 (1930), 627. Cf. OO 2, 2.12.1f (‘De regia via sanctae crucis’) and 3.34.19: ‘Adhuc proch dolor viuit in me vetus homo: non est totus crucifixus, non est perfecte mortuus’ = OO 2, 82.1.7f and 208.1.20f. 62 OO 2, 1.3.13; see also 4.42.7f: ‘Man ascends higher to God as he descends lower into himself and grows more vile in his own eyes. […] the Holy Spirit seeks always the humble heart’.

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sacraments, came to receive greater emphasis. The ideal was for someone to die daily in his penitence and share in the suffering, death and life of Christ. In the ninety-fourth and ninety-fifth of Luther’s theses (1517), this motif of a life of the cross is connected to the imitation of Christ: ‘Christians should be exhorted to be zealous to follow Christ, their Head, through penalties, deaths, and hell’. Thus they will be ‘more confident of entering heaven through many tribulations’. Luther developed the shift from a purely spiritual communion with Christ to a more frequent and sacramental communion, which finds its modest origins in the late Middle Ages.63 The shift occurred in significant measure when he established in the Sunday liturgy a weekly Lord’s Supper celebration open to all believers. Calvin followed Luther on this point as early as in his first church order.64 Ideally people ought to have the chance to ‘partake of the Eucharist’ at every gathering, that is, probably even at the weekday assemblies. As Calvin wrote, ‘Plainly this custom which enjoins us to take communion once a year is a veritable invention of the devil’.65 Luther and Calvin attempted to pursue a weekly celebration of the Eucharist. In this respect Calvin may have failed in Geneva, and yet he did manage to give the Lord’s Supper an obligatory character. Why did the Reformers decide to offer lay people a weekly celebration of the Eucharist when shortly before they had harshly condemned the sacramental externalisation of religion as it had been practised in the established church? Their decision will seem less strange to us when we consider that they were

63 In the medieval period, the custom was for people to receive sacramental communion once a year, around Easter. At that time they went to communion and received the host. Throughout the rest of the year, they only received spiritual communion in which one united one’s spirit with Christ without actually receiving the host. After the Reformation, the more frequent, communal participation in the Lord’s Supper expressed the unified character of the church members. In this way, the continued involvement of the people could be measured beyond the Easter period as well. However, people continued to show a certain reserve toward participating in communion more often than was strictly legislated. Spiritual communion was seen as a ‘safer’ way to be united to Christ without running the danger of partaking of the sacrament in an unworthy manner and to one’s condemnation. 64 ‘Right Honourable Gentlemen: it is certain that a Church cannot be said to be well ordered and regulated unless in it the Holy Supper of our Lord is always being celebrated and frequented. […] It would be well to require that the Communion of the Holy Supper of Jesus Christ [que la communication de la saincte cène de Jesucrist] be held every Sunday at least as a rule’, or even at every assembly, as he wrote in Institution de la religion chrétienne (1536), in OS 1, 369–70 = John Calvin, Ioannis Calvini Opera Omnia – Epistolae, volumen I (1530–Sept. 1538), edited by Augustijn, Cornelis/Stam, Frans P. van (Genève: Droz, 2005), vol. 6/1, 160 (ep. 31). 65 OS 1, 149 = John Calvin, Institutes of the Christian Religion. 1536 Edition, edited by Battles, Ford L. (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1989), 113.

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concerned with the inner experience of sharing in the body and blood of Christ in the unio cum Christo.66 Although the true Christian does not rely on his spiritual foundation or on his conscience in whatever sublimated form it may take, we find our basis ‘outside ourselves’ (extra nos). Heiko Oberman observes in this the indispensable root of the Reformation principle ‘Christ alone’ (solus Christus).67 Applied to the sacrament, this means that in communion there is only the unique, irreplaceable sacrifice of Christ (§§37, 49–52). But that does not alter the fact that every lay believer must be a spiritual being (homo spiritualis),68 in such a way as to exclude all varieties of ‘doing one’s best’,69 as Luther reminds us. ‘The spiritual man [is he] who strives [not by the height of his mental powers, nor by synteresis, but] by faith; the apostle calls this man spiritual,70 and true Christians are not unlike him’.71 Calvin had a more active preparation of communion in mind, somewhat more in the line of Melanchthon. In the late Middle Ages, preparation for communion consisted in reflecting on the mystery of Easter in combination with a faithful agreement with church doctrine and sincere repentance and love of Christ demonstrated in confession.72 Many were worried about whether they were worthy enough to participate in communion and – in fear of judgement – would choose spiritual confession instead (for which the preparation was the same). By implementing compulsory Easter communion, the church authorities limited this common tendency to avoid communion. Two centuries later, Thomas would address especially those who were worried about their unworthiness in his Devout Exhortation to the Holy Communion. According to Thomas, Christ had already solved the problem of communion avoidance himself with the words with which he starts the

66 Cf. Luther’s Eyn sermon von dem hochwirdigen sacrament (1519). 67 Heiko A. Oberman, The Reformation: Roots and Ramifications (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1994), 129. 68 For the background of this term, see Steven E. Ozment, Homo Spiritualis: A Comparative Study of the Anthropology of Johannes Tauler, Jean Gerson and Martin Luther (1509–1516) in the Context of Their Theological Thought (Leiden: Brill, 1969), in particular 197. 69 Oberman, The Reformation, 127. 70 1 Cor 2:14f. 71 WA 9, 103–4. 72 Cf. Caspers, ‘Meum summum desiderium est te habere’, 205ff. By an upright and devout desire (minne) and the remembrance of the suffering and death of Christ, a close bond is developed with the Lord. William of Saint-Thierry wrote that we must have in our mind an image of Christ’s suffering, ‘some image or painting or other’ so that ‘our eyes, glued to earth, might see something on which they can concentrate their sight’. ‘Our worship is then not concerned the image itself, but the reality of your suffering as it is portrayed’, in William of Saint-Thierry, Meditaties, edited by Verdeyen, Paul (Bonheiden: Priorij Bethlehem, 1978), §6.

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exhortation:73 ‘“Come to me”, You say, “all you that labour and are burdened, and I will refresh you”. Oh, how sweet and kind to the ear of the sinner is the word by which You, my Lord God, invite the poor and needy to receive Your most holy Body! […] 74 If You, Lord, had not said it, who would have believed it to be true? And if You had not commanded, who would dare approach?’ (1, 9–10 and 17–18; cf. Matt 11:28). Thomas calls his readers to do their utmost to be as worthy as possible at communion, remaining aware, however, that one can never be worthy enough through one’s own power.75 One has to prepare a home in one’s own heart for the coming of the Beloved, but his arrival is not based on one’s own merit but only thanks to grace: ‘Everyone who loves prepares the best and most beautiful home for his beloved, because the love of the one receiving his lover is recognized thereby. But understand that you cannot by any merit of your own make this preparation well enough, though you spend a year in doing it and think of nothing else. It is only by My goodness and grace that you are allowed to approach My table, as though a beggar were invited to dinner by a rich man and he had nothing to offer in return for the gift but to humble himself and give thanks’ (12, 6–8). The Beloved wants to reside in a pure heart, and in that heart the communicant is a guest at the table of the Beloved (12, 8).76 The preparation of communion further consists of an investigation of one’s conscience (7), total submission to God, humility (8 and 15), prayer (9), confession and faith in the real presence (4, 8; 7, 1–3; 10, 11–13). Of primary importance to be able to receive him are humility and self-denial: ‘So also the more perfectly a man renounces things of this world, and the more completely he dies to himself through contempt of self, the more quickly this great grace comes to him, the more plentifully it enters in, and the higher it uplifts the free heart’ (15, 13; cf. §§20–8).

73 Among other passages we find the invitation to ‘Come to me’ (Matt 11:28) in Chapter 1, 1, 9, 12, 16, 47 and in Chapter 4, 21. 74 ‘Who am I, Lord, that I should presume to approach You? Behold, the heaven of heavens cannot contain You, and yet You say: “Come, all of you, to Me”. What means this most gracious honor and this friendly invitation? How shall I dare to come, I who am conscious of no good on which to presume? How shall I lead You into my house, I who have so often offended in Your most kindly sight? Angels and archangels revere You, the holy and the just fear You, and You say: “Come to Me: all of you!”’ (1, 11–16). 75 See OO 2, 2.4.14, and 5.1–9. 76 See ibid., 2.1.13.

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The effects or fruits of the communion with Christ In addition to the exclusive nature of communion as union with Christ,77 there are also many derived effects mentioned in Thomas’s Devout Exhortation (4). He usually talks about the fruits (fructus or effectus) which strengthen the soul in a healing and nourishing way.78 In his union with Christ, the faithful communicant is transformed in him, and for the purpose of his life and salvation he receives power, food and graces.79 ‘Oh, the wonderful and hidden grace of this Sacrament which only the faithful of Christ understand, which unbelievers and slaves of sin cannot experience!’ (1, 37).80 The fruit of communion was at the same time like a visit from God, food for the soul and spiritual medicine, at times no more than ‘some small spark of divine fire’ (4, 19). It is thanks to the essential connectedness with Christ that one does not collapse along the way, as a student summarises in Chapter 3: ‘Without You I cannot exist, without Your visitation I cannot live. I must often come to You, therefore, and receive the strength of my salvation lest, deprived of this heavenly food, I grow weak on the way’ (3, 7–8). Thomas switches between communion as an exclusive unification with Christ and the fruits of it – the beneficial strengthening of the soul. With this distinction, he places himself in a long tradition that Calvin also places himself in by means of this treatise.81 77 Thomas speaks in Chapters 1 and 3, for example, about the joy of the unification and of the full realisation of eternal salvation, as often as you are worthily and devoutly received: ‘O happy mind and blessed soul which deserves to receive You, her Lord God, and in receiving You, is filled with spiritual joy! How great a Master she entertains, what a beloved guest she receives, how sweet a companion she welcomes, how true a friend she gains, how beautiful and noble is the spouse she embraces, beloved and desired above all things that can be loved and desired!’ (OO 2, 1.32 and 3.20–1). 78 As early as the beginning of the thirteenth century these fruits were specified in ‘lists of fruits’, which included anywhere between three and thirty-six different fruits and which could largely be divided into the categories of ‘healing’ and ‘edification’. See Charles M.A. Caspers, De eucharistische vroomheid en het feest van sacramentsdag in de Late Middeleeuwen (Leuven: Peeters, 1992), 192–7. 79 Thomas Aquinas, who was largely responsible for the shape of eucharistic piety and whose reflection on the fruits of communion were included by Pope Eugenius IV (1383–1444) in the bull Exsultate Deo and adopted by Thomas à Kempis, calls the first effect of the sacrament the soul’s unification with Christ, the increase of grace, the maintenance, improvement and strengthening of the spiritual life (as with physical food for the body), and an aid against sin and growth in virtue and grace. See Denzinger, Kompendium, 458 (no. 1322). 80 ‘In it spiritual grace is conferred, lost virtue restored, and the beauty, marred by sin, repaired. At times, indeed, its grace is so great that, from the fullness of the devotion, not only the mind but also the frail body feels filled with greater strength’ (1, 38–9; for the healing effect, see also 3, 14 and 4, 11). 81 Together with Augustine he shared the insight that ‘Christ is the end, insofar as he is God’, for which reason we must participate in communion in a worthy manner, and ‘that Christ is the

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Thomas ends the twelfth chapter on the preparation for communion with the admonition that the student, after he has received Christ in his heart during communion, should live his life actively with its after-effect. That is at least as important as the preparation: ‘Not only should you prepare devoutly before communion, but you should also carefully keep yourself in devotion after receiving the sacrament. The careful custody of yourself afterward is no less necessary than the devout preparation before, for a careful after watch is the best preparation for obtaining greater grace. If a person lets his mind wander to external comforts, he becomes quite indisposed. Beware of much talking. Remain in seclusion and enjoy your God, for you have Him Whom all the world cannot take from you. I am He to Whom you should give yourself entirely, that from now on you may live, not in yourself, but in Me, with all cares cast away’ (12, 17–23). The student receives much in a worthily received communion, but he is still on the way. In addition, the duty to responsibly and caringly hold on, ‘for you have Him Whom all the world cannot take from you’. But what more is there to desire when you have Him? The answer is: more of Him. According to Calvin, too, believers receive the gifts of God’s grace through participation in communion. It is confirmed, over and over again, that ‘our actual life’ (nostre vie unique) is in Him (§4). The Holy Spirit plays a hidden mediating role in this holy exchange of offering and receiving eternal salvation. He melts the lives of Christ and believers together, just as he makes sure that people come to faith and obedience to Christ and receive the certainty of eternal life, and that people are hungry and long for this unique unity with Him. Without the Spirit, the physical consumption of the bread of communion cannot bear fruit, as is also the case with the hearing of God’s Word.82 He writes: ‘Now what is said of the Word fitly belongs also to the sacrament of the Supper, by means of which the Lord leads us to communion with Jesus Christ’ (§5).83 Although Calvin likes to make clear distinctions, we must note that in the treatise on the Eucharist he barely differentiates between the unification with Christ as the main goal of communion and its fruits. Just as it is for Thomas, this way, insofar as he is man’, who communicates the fruits to us. Otto Gründler, ‘Devotio Moderna’, in Raitt, Jill (ed.), Christian Spirituality: High Middle Ages and Reformation (London: Routledge/Kegan Paul, 1987) 176–93, on 183; Augustine of Hippo, ‘Sermones ad populum’, in Migne, Jacques-Paul (ed.), MPL, vol. 38 (1865), 685. 82 John I. Hesselink, ‘Pneumatologie’, in Selderhuis, Herman J. (ed.), Calvijn Handboek (Kampen: Kok, 2008) 337–52, on 339f. 83 The Spirit anchors the promises of God in our conscience, causes us to share in divine salvation in a tangible way, and therefore makes us his thankful and joyful companions (§§3, 6). The communicant eats the bread and drinks the wine in faith, but this does not automatically lead to the reception of Christ’s body and blood. Although in Calvin’s view the communicant receives an important role, namely to receive the elements in a worthy manner and in faith, it is God the Holy Spirit who ensures that the spiritual effect takes place.

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unification seems to be a goal in and of itself and might even be the most important, most unique fruit of communion (§§4, 11, 17; cf. 1, 32). Characteristic for the believing student is the intrinsic motivation and the desire to, once again, experience the connection with Christ and to live in accordance with his will and be helped and fed by him more and more (§§22, 23, 27, 32).84 In addition, Calvin finds it important that with his weak faith and frightened heart the communicant should be encouraged and that he should receive certainty of salvation: ‘It pleased him to add a visible sign to his Word, in which he puts before us the essence [substance] of his promises, to confirm us and to strengthen us by liberating us from all doubt and uncertainty’ (§5),85 and in order to anchor his promises ‘in our consciences’ he gives us access to his body and blood, so that our faith in God’s salvation is enforced and strengthened (§6; cf. §17) and so that our gratitude towards him may increase and help him openly testify to our faith in him. ‘[I]n this we see another outstanding benefit of the Supper, that it turns us from ingratitude, and does not allow us to forget the good our Lord did us in dying for us, but rather induces us to render thanks to him, and, as it were, by public confession, protest how much we are indebted to him’ (§18). According to Calvin, when Christ instituted Holy Communion he meant it as a seal as well as a sign, that is, a ‘means’ of giving us assurance of our salvation, a ‘prompter’ to praise and thanksgiving, an ‘exhortation’ to union and brotherly love (§6). It is a sign with an effect. It brings about in us confidence and holiness of life.86 Calvin is striving to find the right point of balance (in the medieval and contemporary debate about signification and analogy) between signs as mere pointers and as powerful realities. Calvin gives the example of the bread, which represents the Lord’s body, and the wine, which represents his blood, to teach us that, just as bread and wine nourish our bodies, so the body of Christ and his blood nourish our souls spiritually.

84 In the medieval church people were legally required to participate in communion once per year and to go to confession in preparation for this participation. Luther argued that no one should ever be forced to participate. At the same time, he did not consider those who did not partake of the sacraments to be Christians. See Hans Lietzmann (ed.), Die Bekenntnisschriften der evangelisch-lutherischen Kirche, herausgegeben im Gedenkjahr der Augsburgischen Konfession 1930 (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1998), 717–19, 731–2 (Luther’s 1529 Large Catechism on the Lord’s Supper and on Confession). 85 Cf. OS 1, 118–19. 86 TFT, 104 (§9) = OS 1, 506f. A few years later he calls the sacraments not only ladders for our understanding to climb, but ladders by which we ourselves may scale upwards to heaven; see the Exposition of the Heads of Agreement of the Mutual Consent of the Churches of Zurich and Geneva, in TT 2, 229.

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As one of the great advantages of participating in Holy Communion, Calvin mentions the life-changing aspect, namely that it encourages us to live holy, pious and closely connected lives:87 The third benefit consists in our having a vehement incitement to holy living, and above all to observe charity and brotherly love among us. For since we are there made members of Jesus Christ, being incorporated into him and united to him as to our Head, this is good reason, first, that we be conformed to his purity and innocence, and especially that we have to one another such charity and concord as members of the same body ought to have. […] For the chief thing is that he cares for us internally by his Holy Spirit, so as to give efficacy to his ordinance, which he has destined for this purpose, as an instrument by which he will do his work in us (§19).

Some final remarks In our analysis of Thomas à Kempis’s Devout Exhortation and John Calvin’s Petit traicté, we discussed the importance of a good preparation for and the rewards of Holy Communion as a connection with Christ. The communion with the body and blood of Christ in the Eucharist is for them a mysterious representation of the conjunction with Him.

Plato’s conception of participation According to René Benoist, a later opponent of the Reformer, Calvin removed the presence of Christ from the material realm and confined it to a transcendent spiritual or conceptual realm. The believers may partake of the real body of Christ, even though Christ’s body remains in heaven and is not present in the bread and wine. This point, he said, appears ‘to all persons of good and sound intelligence more absurd and inept than the vain Ideas of Plato ever were’.88 Benoist’s reference to the Platonic ideas was meant to accuse Calvin of proffering a vision of reality in which the ultimately real lies only in a conceptual realm, beyond the world of sense experience.

87 William of Saint-Thierry and many after him appealed to Augustine’s statement ‘that this food is not like other foods that are included in our body, but on the contrary, our bodies change in the nature of this food’. See Augustine of Hippo, Corpus Christianorum Series Latina 27 – Confessionum libri XIII, edited by Verheijen, Lucas (Turnhout: Brepols, 1981), 103–4. 88 René Benoist, Seconde epitre à Jean Calvin, dict ministre de Genève (Paris: Nicolas Chesneau, 1564), 19f.

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Indeed it is true that Plato’s concept of participation is to be recognised in Calvin’s doctrine of the sacraments. The sacraments are outward signs of the invisible goodness which God has toward his people. Calvin argues, as I have said, for sacramental communion and does not favour only a so-called unilateral eye communion. However, ‘the believer, when he sees the sacraments with his own eyes, does not halt at the physical sight of them, but indeed by those steps (which I have indicated by analogy) rises up in devout contemplation to those lofty mysteries which lie hidden in the sacraments’.89 Plato would recognise in these words the doctrine of a true disciple.

A middle position Both the influential spiritual leaders that we have examined propagated a position that holds a middle ground between the various spiritual movements in the established church of their time. Calvin, furthermore, attempted to bring the followers of Zwingli and Luther closer to each other on the point of communion (§§53–60). Thomas unites the existing opinions on communion. He reconciles opinions that had often led to irreconcilable positions, such as the minimal and maximal interpretation of unification with Christ in the sacrament. Because of this, his own opinion is sometimes less easy to comprehend, such as on the point of unification with God which is real but not complete.90 For him, communion is not just a (final) goal, a foretaste of the eventual unification with God, but because of the many benefits also a (middle) goal, a step in the right direction on the way to eternity. Illustrative of Calvin’s middle position is the way he introduces in his treatise its own internal and spiritual concept of substance, in which he placed Jesus’s words ‘This is my body’ – which in the liturgy are read right before the communion, understood both as spiritual and as substantial (§60). Calvin does not want to weaken any part of the reality of the presence of Christ. In this tract he introduces his interpretation of loaded words such as ‘substance’ (substantia) and ‘participation’ (participatio) to make it clear that the believer actually receives Christ in the sacrament, invisibly and spiritually, but that this does not make it any less real. With the first term ‘spiritual’ he mainly reflects the Zwinglian tradition, and with the second term ‘substantial’ the Lutheran tradition. That Christ’s body and blood are offered to us in the sac-

89 Inst. 4.14.5. 90 Caspers, ‘Thomas von Kempen und die Kommunion’, 167f.

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rament is for him very real, i. e. not in a local and material substantial way, but imaginable in a spiritual-substantial sense. Thomas places himself between the late medieval and post-Tridentine spirituality. His great appreciation of spiritual communion was typically medieval and would later lose its value. His preference for a frequent sacramental communion for all believers inspired people like Luther and Calvin. In the late medieval period, lay believers did not frequently participate in sacramental communion, but spiritual communion was widely and commonly accessible. For the layman, the two were interchangeable, with spiritual communion even being preferred, as it did not involve any dangers and did not cost anything. This is another example of Thomas’s middle position in terms of sacramental and spiritual communion.91 For Thomas, the two supplement each other. Although he promotes frequent attendance of sacramental communion throughout the book,92 in Chapter 10 he argues that spiritual communion is something which is in no way inferior, but in which one should only participate if legally prevented from attending sacramental communion.93 Calvin propagated a very frequent, weekly sacramental communion for every believer, just like Luther before him, and he did not recognise spiritual communion as a sacrament. In his opinion, the bread and wine should be given to all churchgoers not just during the annual Easter communion, but frequently, as Thomas had promoted before him, or even on a weekly basis.94

91 On this point he also steers a middle course between two other representatives of the devotio moderna, namely Geert Groote (d. 1380) and Gabriël Biel (d. 1495). Groote out of a sense of modesty preferred spiritual communion, while Biel did not look upon spiritual communion of God’s work in us but as the result of the believer’s own religious act. See Post, Modern Devotion, 181–7 and André Goossens, ‘Résonances eucharistiques à la fin du Moyen Age’, in Haquin, André (ed.), Fête-Dieu (1246–1996) (2 vols.; Louvain-la-Neuve: Institut d’Études Médiévales de l’Université Catholique de Louvain, 1999) vol. 1, 173–91. 92 For the element of daily sacramental communion, see 3, 7–8 and 10, 19. 93 ‘When he is indeed unable to come, he will always have the good will and pious intention to communicate and thus he will not lose the fruit of the Sacrament. Any devout person may at any hour on any day receive Christ in spiritual communion profitably and without hindrance. Yet on certain days and times appointed he ought to receive with affectionate reverence the Body of his Redeemer in this Sacrament, seeking the praise and honour of God rather than his own consolation. For as often as he devoutly calls to mind the mystery and passion of the Incarnate Christ, and is inflamed with love for Him, he communicates mystically and is invisibly refreshed. He who prepares himself only when festivals approach or custom demands, will often find himself unprepared’ (10, 22–5). See Caspers, De eucharistische vroomheid, 217, n. 362. 94 The late medieval church promoted frequent spiritual communion, with the clergy being the only one to partake of actual communion. See Caspers, De eucharistische vroomheid, 215, 223.

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Liturgical innovations Calvin’s view of communion liturgy is characterised by a continual search for a new balance between verbal and nonverbal ways of communication. During mass, Christ’s sacrifice was often enacted and repeated as a holy play. Calvin complains about the excess of theatre without the necessary explanation (§§47– 50). He experienced the inaccessibility of adequately expressing the theological truths which could only be partly grasped and did not fail to recognise how far the mystery was beyond man’s comprehension: ‘Now, if anyone should ask me how this [presence of Christ in the Eucharist] takes place, I shall not be ashamed to confess that it is a secret too lofty for either my mind to comprehend or my words to declare. And to speak more plainly, I rather experience than understand it’.95 In opposing the theory of a local presence and the practice it supported, Calvin used the liturgical call to point (elevate) one’s heart up to heaven: ‘For only then will our souls be disposed to be nourished and quickened by his substance when they are so lifted up above all earthly things to attain even unto heaven and to enter into the kingdom of God where he dwells. Let us, then, be content to have the bread and the wine as signs and attestations, seeking the truth spiritually where the word of God promises that we shall find it’.96 The sacramental reality has a Christological and pneumatological side to it. A precise distinction between the presence of Christ and the Spirit in the sacrament is not indicated by Calvin. It is a dynamic act that we find in his liturgy, both in the épiclèse, the prayer for the presence of the Spirit in the sacrament, and in the sursum corda, the call to lift up the hearts to Christ in heaven.

The importance of maintaining a healthy tension The Eucharist was in Calvin’s thought a mysterious event because of the more or less Platonic background of his eucharistic theology. It is necessary to go beyond the wine and bread because they are signs and not reality. He can say that the Eucharist is the presence of Christ in a physical sense, and that it is not. The sacrament has reality and validity to the degree that the earthly sensible signifies the heavenly intelligible.97 95 Inst. 4.17.32. Cf. OO 2, e. g. 1, 1.9: ‘I would rather feel contrition [compunctio] than know how to define it’. 96 See also, for example, TFT, 119f and 128f (§§40f, 58f) = OS 1, 521 and 529f; OS 2, 48 = CStA 2, 210; CO 6, 200. 97 The same could be said about the church. The church is invisible and visible; to the degree that the earthly, sensible church participates in the eternal and intelligible, it has a reality and validity.

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It is this dialectical thinking which characterises Calvin’s theology of communion and connects it to Thomas. Through dying we receive life; to become yourself you have to subjugate yourself. Thomas and Calvin find this form of expression necessary, because the mystery endlessly exceeds our human ability to understand, while our entire life is formed by it. But Calvin is more radical in this dialectical way of speaking than Thomas is. A person is justified in Christ while also remaining a sinner; the unification with God is God’s hidden work for which people prepare themselves incessantly; communion takes place in heaven and on earth; in the sacramental communion it happens while the communicant consumes the visible signs, but in reality the most important aspect is hidden behind those signs; Christ only offers himself to those who receive faith from him; it is Christ alone, but not without a worthy preparation of the human; the communicant possesses Christ and wants to meet Him again and again; he is certain of eternal life and wants at the same time to be reassured of his being a child of God and of his eternal fate; the communicant is intensely and actively present but at the same time not an active participant, etc. It is curious how for Calvin the existence of this paradoxical tension plays an essential role in his thinking on the unification with Christ in communion, as if he wants to say two things at once. The mysterious communion is, in his view, both immanent and transcendent, sacramental and spiritual, practical and mystical, ecclesiastical yet more than that. In Calvin’s opinion, in the Eucharist it is not about the historical body of Christ, but rather about the mystery of the body of the God-man Christ. The opposita must remain. Transubstantiation destroys the healthy tension: the sign becomes the signified, the intelligible reality becomes the image, heaven comes to earth. And gone then is the mystery! The dialectic here is between the earthly and the heavenly, between the image and the intelligible reality. Through the earthly sign one participates in the heavenly body, per visibilia ad invisibilia.98 The sacrament binds people on earth and at the same time connects the visible and the invisible world. It is about unification with Christ as well as with the other, it is a very intimate and personal and at the same time communal

98 In this way Calvin could combine the imperative of the ascension and Christ’s words that ‘This is my body’. This happens very clearly in his Christological dialectic of what is called the extra calvinisticum. The Son of God descended from heaven in such a way that, without leaving heaven, he was born, lived on earth, and was crucified, and yet he continuously filled the world even as he had done from the beginning (Inst. 2.13.4). The godhead fully committed in the incarnation remains the godhead uncommitted, the godhead unmixed, present everywhere, the godhead undivided, present in his humanity. See McDonnell, John Calvin, the Church, and the Eucharist, 213.

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process, life is about becoming one with Christ as well as the preparation for that moment,99 which one should do as often as possible.

The balance between inner and outer, transcendence and immanence Calvin’s eucharistic realism was most critical of the juridicism and triumphalism of the established church. The reform movement (i. e. devotio moderna) to which Thomas belonged grew from a critical attitude towards church life. The goal was to have more internal connectedness with Christ and less emphasis on external appearances in the church.100 The flight from secondary causality is seen as a return to transcendence. For Calvin, sacramental theology is not a closed system that should be transmitted, nor even an institution of sanctification, but rather a dynamic event, a union of head and members, a participation with the dead and resurrected Christ. The Eucharist for him is a preceding union with Christ. The whole of Christ, both God and human, is present in the Eucharist, but not entirely, because his spatial body is in heaven. This is why we are offered, according to Calvin, the whole (totus) but not the entire (totum) Christ. To clarify this distinction, Calvin points to an existing scholastic expression: ‘totus (sed) non totum’. To be present as the entire human and divine being, his body does not need to leave heaven. And because the divinity of Christ is always present in his believers, Christ’s flesh can also remain in them.101 The fact that the entire Christ and the believer are spatially separated but in reality have communion in the Eucharist can be seen as a mystical aspect of Calvin’s doctrine of communion.102 The sacrament does not work automatically. Humans have to receive him respectfully and prepare themselves well. For this, it is necessary for communi99 For both men there was a close connection between knowledge of God and knowledge of self, and between these two kinds of knowledge and their sacramental spirituality. There are clearly overtones of Thomas’s view of man in Calvin’s doctrine of wisdom, which are found in the very first sentence of the Institutes in the editions after 1539: ‘The whole sum of our wisdom which is worth calling true and certain is practically comprised of two parts, the knowledge of God and of ourselves’. 100 Cf. Martin Bucer’s rendition of a statement from the medieval theologian Wessel Gansfort at the Diet of Augsburg on 11 October 1533: ‘Wir müssen gothes, nit Luthers oder einige menschen gleubigen sien’; as cited by Marijn de Kroon, ‘Wij geloven in God en in Christus. Niet in de kerk’: Wessel Gansfort (gest. 1489) en Martin Bucer (gest. 1551) (Kampen: Kok, 2004), 158. 101 See De vera participatione Christi in coena, in CO 9, 475–6, 509–10 = TT 2, 515, 560. 102 Applied to the Lord’s Supper, the extra calvinisticum means that we do not partake of Christ’s flesh in a material-historical sense, but that through the divine-human unity of Christ believers truly receive his entire person in body and soul in an invisible, spiritual way at communion.

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cants to know their own need for salvation (§3), investigate their own conscience and weaknesses (§§7–13) and long to better their lives (§§16–18). Christ offers himself, and believers have to accept him in the right way. The sacramental unification is ideally a total one. Believers have to become one with Christ, or are transformed into Christ, because we live in God (§§3–4). In communion, Thomas and Calvin both aim above all at union with Christ. In the intimate connection of the soul with him, the communicant is digested in the words of Thomas and transformed in Christ through God’s grace and Spirit: ‘Let Your presence wholly inflame me, consume and transform me into Yourself, that I may become one spirit with You by the grace of inward union and by the melting power of Your ardent love’ (16, 10). For both men, no life is imaginable outside this intimate communion with Christ, which is why they are so passionate in their plea for frequent communion. As Thomas points out in a reference to the story of Zaccheus, drawing a link to the metaphor of the pure heart as a dinner table (12, 3) and a house: ‘I long to receive You now, devoutly and reverently. I desire to bring You into my house that, with Zaccheus, I may merit Your blessing and be numbered among the children of Abraham. My soul longs for Your Body; my heart desires to be united with You’ (3, 4–5). Typical for the eucharistic piety we have discussed is the desire to be united with Christ, to ‘house’ him in ‘my soul’ and in ‘my heart,’ as Thomas puts it, and to own him, as Calvin repeatedly states in his treatise. At the same time, each communion strengthens that desire to be one with him (12, 19; cf. §§9, 13, 17, 30, 50).103 It is the duty of Christians to make sure that nothing comes between the person and work of Christ and the believer (12, 20). The unio cum Christo at the table of the Lord is for Thomas and Calvin a mysterious event which connects them in Him also to each other, and to us.

Conclusion Both men, Thomas and Calvin, had a critical attitude towards the church of their time, attempting to restore the more personal elements and to issue a call for inwardness and interiority. Like Thomas, Calvin pursues interiority and with almost implacable zeal directs everything to the eternal intelligible reality. In this move away from the objective view of the sacramental theology of the established church, they did not become mere subjectivists. Both found a middle way between a purely spiritual communication, in which the actual consumption of the 103 For the notion of ‘housing’ Christ after communion as based upon the story of Zaccheus, see Caspers, De eucharistische vroomheid, 199.

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sacrament was not necessary, and a sacramental communication, in which the role of the communicant did not really matter and the hidden mysterious site of the sacrament was reduced or even eliminated.104 The different views on the Eucharist formed a divisive issue between Protestants and Catholics and also internally among sixteenth-century Protestants. In October 1561, the French clerics and Calvinists managed to formulate a compromise for which Calvin’s doctrine of communion partly formed the basis, in particular his dialectical solution to hold together sign and res signified as a transcended mystery without identifying any material of finite locus with God, and his attempt to preserve both distinction and conjunction, distance and proximity, in explaining the relationship between Christ’s body and the sacramental signs.105 In touching on the heart of the matter, they speak less in rational or practical terms, but rather in hearty, intimate, affective, and relational terms about experiencing, feeling, participating, communication and even about being united with Christ and God, or at least about the intense desire for all this. The beginning is a sign, a piece of bread and a sip of wine, but it represents the reality of heaven, a divine relationship, a great invisible faith commitment, where words fail. The bread remains in Calvin’s view simply bread, but used by the Spirit of God it changes the communicant, brings him into contact with God, merges the one into the other, whereby both God and man are glorified; this is the wondrous thing that happens in the holy sacrament: a simple symbol works out ‘a mystical union’, as Calvin calls it. ‘He in me’ becomes through a sacramental change ‘I in Him’. This eucharistic piety of Holy Communion with Jesus Christ applies to both the Reformed and Catholic faiths.

Bibliography Angenendt, Arnold, Geschichte der Religiosität im Mittelalter (Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, 22005). Augustijn, Cornelis, Erasmus: Der Humanist als Theologe und Kirchenreformer (Leiden: Brill, 1996). Augustine of Hippo, Tractates on the Gospel of John, in Migne, Jacques-Paul (ed.), Patrologiae cursus completus. Series latina (MPL) (Paris: Garnier, 1844–64) vol. 35 (1845). 104 Henri de Lubac, Catholicism: Christ and the Common Destiny of Man (San Francisco: Ignatius, 22006), 13ff; Hans Boersma, Heavenly Participation: The Weaving of a Sacramental Tapestry (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2011), 112–16 (‘The Threefold Body’). 105 Christopher Elwood, The Body Broken: The Calvinist Doctrine of the Eucharist and the Symbolization of Power in Sixteenth-Century France (New York: Oxford University Press, 1999), 168. For the attempt at the Colloquy of Poissy to create a compromise formula on the Eucharist, see Speelman, Calvin and the Independence of the Church, 191–200.

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Augustine of Hippo, ‘Sermones ad populum’, in Migne, Jacques-Paul (ed.), MPL, vol. 38 (1865). Augustine of Hippo, Corpus Christianorum Series Latina 27 – Confessionum libri XIII, edited by Verheijen, Lucas (Turnhout: Brepols, 1981). Benoist, René, Seconde epitre à Jean Calvin, dict ministre de Genève (Paris: Nicolas Chesneau, 1564). Bernard of Clairvaux, ‘Liber de gradibus humilitatis et superbiae’, in Bernard of Clairvaux, Sancti Bernardi Opera, edited by Leclercq, Jean/Rochais, Henri (8 vols.; Roma: Editiones Cistercienses, 1957–77) vol. 3 Tractatus et opuscula (1963), 2–60. Bizer, Ernst, Studien zur Geschichte des Abendmahlsstreits im 16. Jahrhundert (Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, 1972). Boersma, Hans, Heavenly Participation: The Weaving of a Sacramental Tapestry (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2011). Bouwsma, William J., John Calvin: A Sixteenth-Century Portrait (Oxford/New York: Oxford University Press, 1988). Browe, Peter, Die verehrung der Eucharistie im Mittelalter (München: Max Hueber, 1933). Busch, Eberhard, Gotteserkenntnis und Menschlichkeit: Einsichten in die Theologie Johannes Calvins (Zürich: Theologischer Verlag Zürich, 2005). Calvin, John, Calvin-Studienausgabe, edited by Busch, Eberhard/Freudenberg, Matthias/ Heron, Alasdair (8 vols.; Neukirchen: Neukirchen-Vluyn, 1994–2011) [= CStA]. Calvin, John, Eén met Christus: Een klein traktaat van Johannes Calvijn over het heilig Avondmaal, edited by Speelman, Herman A. (Kampen: Brevier, 2014). Calvin, John, Institutes of the Christian Religion, edited by McNeill, John T./Battles, Ford L. (2 vols.; Louisville/London: Westminster Press, 1960) [= Inst.]. Calvin, John, Institutes of the Christian Religion. 1536 Edition, edited by Battles, Ford L. (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1989). Calvin, John, Institutes of the Christian Religion. 1541 French Edition, edited by McKee, Elsie A. (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2009). Calvin, John, Institution de la religion chrétienne, edited by Millet, Olivier (2 vols.; Genève: Droz, 2008) [= IRC]. Calvin, John, Ioannis Calvini Opera Omnia – Epistolae, volumen I (1530–Sept. 1538), edited by Augustijn, Cornelis/Stam, Frans P. van (Genève: Droz, 2005). Calvin, John, Ioannis Calvini Opera Omnia – Scripta didactica et polemica, volumen IV: Epistolae duae (1537), Deux discourse (Oct. 1536), edited by Boer, Erik A. de/Stam, Frans P. van (Genève: Droz, 2009). Calvin, John, Ioannis Calvini opera quae supersunt omnia, edited by Baum, Johann W./ Cunitz, August E./Reuss, Eduard W.E. (59 vols.; Brunswick: C.A. Schwetschke, 1863– 1900) [= CO 1–59]. Calvin, John, Joannis Calvini opera selecta, edited by Barth, Peter/Niesel, Wilhelm (5 vols.; Munich: C. Kaiser, 1926–36) [= OS]. Calvin, John, Petit traicté de la saincte cène de nostre Seigneur Jesus Christ, in Calvin, John, Three French Treatises, edited by Higman, Francis M. (London/New York: Atlone Press, 1970) 99–130 [= CO 5, 433–60 = OS 1, 503–30 = CstA 1/2, 422–93]. Calvin, John, Short Treatise on the Holy Supper of our Lord Jesus Christ, in Calvin, John, Tracts and Treatises, edited by Beveridge, Henry (3 vols.; Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1958) [= TT] vol. 2, 163–98.

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Calvin, John, Three French Treatises, edited by Higman, Francis M. (London/New York: Atlone Press, 1970) [= TFT]. Campi, Emidio, ‘Consensus Tigurinus: Werden, Wertung und Wirkung’, in Campi, Emidio/ Reich, Ruedi (ed.), Consensus Tigurinus: Heinrich Bullinger und Johannes Calvin über das Abendmahl (Zürich: TVZ, 2009) 9–41. Carbonnier-Burkard, Marianne, ‘Consensus et différend dans le Petit traité de la sante cène’, in Arnold, Matthieu (ed.), Jean Calvin: les années strasbourgeoises (1538–1541) (Strasbourg: Presses Universitaires de Strasbourg, 2010) 223–49. Caspers, Charles M.A., ‘Meum summum desiderium est te habere. De Eucharistie als sacrament van de godsontmoeting voor alle gelovigen, ca. 1200–ca. 1500’, Ons Geestelijk Erf 70 (1996) 193–215. Caspers, Charles M.A., ‘Thomas von Kempen und die Kommunion. Die Stellung des vieren (dritten) Buches der “Imitatio” innerhalb der spätmittelalterlichen und späteren eucharistischen Frömmigkeit’, in Bodemann, Ulrike/Saubach, Nikolaus (ed.), Aus dem Winkel in die Welt. Die Bücher des Thomas von Kempen und ihre Schicksale (Frankfurt a.M.: Lang, 2006) 158–72. Caspers, Charles M.A., De eucharistische vroomheid en het feest van sacramentsdag in de Late Middeleeuwen (Leuven: Peeters, 1992). Denzinger, Heinrich, Enchiridion symbolorum definitionum et declarationum de rebus fidei et morum. Kompendium der Glaubensbekenntnisse und kirchlichen Lehrentscheidungen, edited by Hünermann, Peter/Hoping, Helmut (Freiburg: Herder, 2001). Elwood, Christopher, The Body Broken: The Calvinist Doctrine of the Eucharist and the Symbolization of Power in Sixteenth-Century France (New York: Oxford University Press, 1999). Erasmus, Desiderius, ‘De ratione studii’, in Erasmus, Desiderius, Ausgewahlte Werke, edited by Holborn, Annemarie/Holborn, Hajo (Munich: Beck, 1933). Erasmus, Desiderius, Enchiridion militis christiani, in Erasmus, Desiderius, Ausgewählte Schriften, edited by Welzig, Werner (8 vols.; Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, 1967–75) vol. 1 Epistola ad Paulum Volzium; Enchiridion militis Christiani (1967), 55–375. Evans, Gillian R., ‘Calvin on Signs: An Augustinian Dilemma’, Renaissance Studies 3/1 (1989) 35–45. Ewerszumrode, Frank, Mysterium Christi spiritualis praesentia: Die Abendmahlslehre des Genfer Reformators Johannes Calvin aus römisch-katholischer Perspektive (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2012). Gansfort, Wessel, Tractatus de oratione et modo orandi, edited by Gansfort, Johan (Zwolle: Simon Corver, ca. 1521). Goossens, André, ‘Résonances eucharistiques à la fin du Moyen Age’, in Haquin, André (ed.), Fête-Dieu (1246–1996) (2 vols.; Louvain-la-Neuve: Institut d’Études Médiévales de l’Université Catholique de Louvain, 1999) vol. 1, 173–91. Grosse, Christian, Les rituels de la cène: le culte eucharistique réformé à Genève (XVIe– XVIIe siècles) (Genève: Droz, 2008). Gründler, Otto, ‘Devotio Moderna’, in Raitt, Jill (ed.), Christian Spirituality: High Middle Ages and Reformation (London: Routledge/Kegan Paul, 1987) 176–93. Hesselink, John I., ‘Pneumatologie’, in Selderhuis, Herman J. (ed.), Calvijn Handboek (Kampen: Kok, 2008) 337–52.

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Higman, Francis M., Piety and the People Religious Printing in French 1511–1551 (Aldershot: Scolar Press, 1996). Janse, Wim, ‘Calvin’s Eucharistic Theology: Three Dogma-Historical Observations’, in Selderhuis, Herman J. (ed.), Calvinus sacrarum literarum interpres: Papers of the International Congress on Calvin Research (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2008) 37–69. John Chrysostom, D. Ioannis Chrysostomi archiepiscopi. Constantinopolitani opera, edited by Erasmus, Desiderius (5 vols.; Basel: Hervagrius, 1530). Köhler, Walther, Das Marburger Religionsgespräch 1529: Versuch einer Rekonstruktion (Leipzig: Heinsius, 1929). Kroon, Marijn de, ‘Wij geloven in God en in Christus. Niet in de kerk’: Wessel Gansfort (gest. 1489) en Martin Bucer (gest. 1551) (Kampen: Kok, 2004). Lietzmann, Hans (ed.), Die Bekenntnisschriften der evangelisch-lutherischen Kirche, herausgegeben im Gedenkjahr der Augsburgischen Konfession 1930 (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1998). Link, Christian, Prädestination und Erwählung: Calvin-Studien (Neukirchen-Vluyn: Neukichener, 2009). Lubac, Henri de, Catholicism: Christ and the Common Destiny of Man (San Francisco: Ignatius, 22006). Luther, Martin, D. Martin Luthers Werke: Kritische Gesamtausgabe (60 vols.; Weimar: Böhlau, 1883–1983) [= WA]. Luther, Martin, Luthers Werke in Auswahl, edited by Clemen, Otto K. (8 vols.; Berlin/Bonn: De Gruyter, 1950–5). Markus, Robert A., ‘St. Augustine on Signs’, in Markus, Robert A. (ed.), Augustine: A Collection of Critical Essays (Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1972) 61–91. McDonnell, Kilian, John Calvin, the Church, and the Eucharist (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1967). McKee, Elsie A., The Pastoral Ministry and Worship in Calvin’s Geneva (Genève: Droz, 2016). Muller, Richard, ‘De Zurich ou Bâle à Strasbourg? Étude sur les prémices de la pensée eucharistique de Calvin’, in Cottret, Bernard/Millet, Olivier (ed.), Jean Calvin et la France (Gene`ve/Paris: Droz, 2009) 41–53. Neuser, Wilhelm, ‘Predestinatie’, in Selderhuis, Herman J. (ed.), Calvijn Handboek (Kampen: Kok, 2008) 353–65. Niesel, Wilhelm, Bekenntnisschriften und Kirchenordnungen der nach Gottes Wort reformierten Kirche (Zollikon/Zürich: Evangelischer Verlag, 1938). Oberman, Heiko A., The Reformation: Roots and Ramifications (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1994). Ozment, Steven E., Homo Spiritualis: A Comparative Study of the Anthropology of Johannes Tauler, Jean Gerson and Martin Luther (1509–1516) in the Context of Their Theological Thought (Leiden: Brill, 1969). Pettegree, Andrew/Walsby, Malcolm/Wilkinson, Alexander (ed.), French Vernacular Books: Books Published in the French Language before 1601 (2 vols.; Leiden/Boston: Brill, 2007). Post, Regnerus R., The Modern Devotion. Confrontation with Reformation and Humanism (Leiden: Brill, 1968).

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Royannez, Marcel, ‘L’eucharistie chez les évangéliques et les premiers réformés français (1522–1546)’, Bulletin. Études, Documents, Chronique littéraire 125 (1979) 548–76. Ruh, Kurt, Geschichte der abendländischen Mystik (4 vols.; München: Beck, 1999). Schwarz, Reinhard, Vorgeschichte der reformatorischen Busstheologie (Berlin: De Gruyter, 1968). Seeberg, Reinhold, Lehrbuch der Dogmengeschichte (Leipzig: A. Deichert, 41920–33). Speelman, Herman A., Biechten bij Calvijn: Over het geheim van heilig communiceren (Heerenveen: Groen, 2010). Speelman, Herman A., Calvin and the Independence of the Church (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2014). Thomas à Kempis, Imitatio Christi, in Thomas à Kempis, Thomae Hemerken a Kempis, Canonici regularis ordinis S. Augustini, Opera Omnia, edited by Pohl, Michael J. (7 vols.; Freiburg i.B.: Herder, 1902–22) [= OO] vol. 2 (1904), 3–263. Van Dijk, Rudolf, Twaalf kapittels over ontstaan, bloei en doorwerking van de Moderne Devotie, edited by Caspers, Charles M.A./Hofman, Rijcklof (Hilversum: Verloren, 2012). Wandel, Lee P., ‘The Body of Christ at Marburg, 1529’, in Melion, Walter/Falkenburg, Reindert (ed.), Image and Imagination of the Religious Self in Late Medieval and Early Modern Europe (Turnhout: Brepols, 2007) 195–213. Wendel, Francois, Calvin: Sources et évolution de sa pensée religieuse (Paris: Presses universitaires de France, 1950). William of Saint-Thierry, Meditaties, edited by Verdeyen, Paul (Bonheiden: Priorij Bethlehem, 1978). Zwingli, Huldrych, Huldreich Zwinglis sämtliche Werke, edited by Egli, Emil/Finsler, Georg (14 vols.; Berlin: Schwetschke, Leipzig: Heinsius Nachfolger and Zürich: Berichthaus, 1905–59). Zwingli, Huldrych, Schriften, edited by Brunnschweiler, Thomas/Lutz, Samuel/Bächtold, Hans U. (4 vols.; Zürich: Theologischer Verlag, 1995).

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‘Das die Seele oder Geyst der menschen / vnsterblich sey’: arguments for the immortality of the soul in later 16th-century German Lutheran theology1

Introduction In 1513, Lateran V, the last council of the pre-Reformation Church, made the immortality of the soul a matter of dogma.2 Martin Luther’s polemic against Lateran V is well known3 and has often been taken to imply a rejection of the immortality doctrine4 on his part.5 Philip Melanchthon, on the other hand,

1 Research for this paper was supported by the Bolyai János Research Scholarship of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences. 2 Heinrich Denzinger, Enchiridion symbolorum definitionum et declarationum de rebus fidei et morum. Kompendium der Glaubensbekenntnisse und kirchlichen Lehrentscheidungen, edited by Hünermann, Peter/Hoping, Helmut (Freiburg: Herder, 402005), 1440. English translation in Heinrich Denzinger, The Sources of Catholic Dogma. Translated by Roy J. Deferrari from the Thirtieth Edition of Henry Denzinger’s Enchiridion Symbolorum (Saint Louis, MO: Herder, 1957), 738. 3 Walther Köhler, Luther und die Kirchengeschichte: Nach seinen Schriften, zunächst bis 1521. Teil I, Abt. 1: Die Ablassinstruktion, die Bullen, Symbole, Concilien und die Mystiker (Hildesheim: Olms, 1984), 100–15; Carl Stange, ‘Luther und das fünfte Laterankonzil’, Zeitschrift für systematische Theologie 6 (1928) 339–444; John Headley, ‘Luther and the Fifth Lateran Council’, Archiv für Reformationsgeschichte 64 (1973) 55–78. 4 Cf. To the Christian Nobility of the German Nation, 1520: ‘They [at the Roman Curia] are hardly able to speak about the faith at all. This they proved quite flagrantly at this last Roman council [Lateran V], in which, among many other childish and frivolous things, they decreed that the soul of man is immortal’, in Martin Luther, Luther’s Works: American Edition, edited by Pelikan, Jaroslav/Lehmann, Helmut T. (55 vols.; Saint Louis, MO: Concordia and Philadelphia: Fortress, 1955–86) [= LW], vol. 44, 163 = Martin Luther, D. Martin Luthers Werke: Kritische Gesamtausgabe – Abteilung 1, Schriften (73 vols.; Weimar: H. Böhlau, 1883–2009) [= WA], vol. 6, 432. 5 This is a highly complex issue on its own, which requires separate treatment. I can only summarily suggest here that this old view has been reconsidered and is still in need of careful reexamination. For the origins of the debate, see the mid-1920s exchange between Carl Stange and Paul Althaus: Carl Stange, ‘Die Unsterblichkeit der Seele’, Zeitschrift für systematische Theologie 2 (1925) 431–63; Carl Stange, Die Unsterblichkeit der Seele (Gütersloh: Bertelsmann, 1925); Carl Stange, ‘Zur Auslegung der Aussagen Luthers über die Unsterblichkeit der Seele’, Zeitschrift für systematische Theologie 3 (1926) 735–84; Paul Althaus, ‘Die Unsterblichkeit der

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clearly taught the immortality of the human soul in his De anima commentary.6 Their students and followers produced a series of works in the later sixteenth century in which they developed a robust understanding of immortality. This contribution offers an analysis of that body of literature, focussing specifically on the arguments the authors provided for the central tenet of the doctrine. The corpus I discuss here is geographically, culturally, and temporally quite extensive.7 It was produced in over a quarter of a century, but the majority of titles were printed several times, with the most successful up to twenty times. Altogether they saw over forty editions during the last four decades of the sixteenth century, with some titles remaining in print well into the 1600s. The towns in which they were printed include, but are not limited to, Strasbourg, Erfurt, Dresden, Bautzen, Leipzig, Wittenberg, Magdeburg, Berlin, Frankfurt (Oder), Hamburg, Rostock and Copenhagen. If this is not the full length and breadth of the Empire, it is at least a substantial part of it, effectively covering the Lutheran territories. The authors, with the single exception of Basilius Faber, a noted Saxon schoolmaster, were Lutheran ministers, but their level of education and ecclesiastical standing varied from simple country parsons to influential university professors, and at least one major player on the European scale of the later Reformation.8

Seele bei Luther’, Zeitschrift für systematische Theologie 3 (1926) 725–34; Paul Althaus, Die letzten Dinge: Entwurf einer christlichen Eschatologie (Gütersloh: Bertelsmann, 31926). 6 See the last chapter in both versions (Commentarius, 1540; Liber, 1553): Philip Melanchthon, Commentarius de anima (Strasbourg: Kraft Müller, 1544), 303–15 and Philip Melanchthon, A Melanchthon Reader (New York: Peter Lang, 1988), 284–9. Cf. Günter Frank, ‘Philipp Melanchthons. Idee von der Unsterblichkeit der menschlichen Seele’, Theologie und Philosophie 68 (1993) 349–67. 7 The works include, in chronological order of their first publication, Melchior Specker’s Vom Leiblichen Todt (1560), Andreas Musculus’s Gelegenheit / Thun vnd Wesen der Verstorbenen (1565), Basilius Faber’s Tractetlein von den Seelen der Verstorbenen (1569), Johannes Garcaeus, Jr.’s Sterbbüchlein (1573), Martin Mirus’s Sieben Christliche Predigten (preached in 1575, first printed in 1590), David Chyträus, Sr.’s De morte et vita aeterna (1581–2, German translation 1590–1), Moses Pflacher’s Die gantze Lehr Vom Tod vnd Absterben des Menschen (1582), and Gregor Weiser’s Christlicher Bericht (1583). Needless to say, further works could be added to the list, but it is my contention that they would not significantly alter the emerging picture. 8 Basic biographical information is available on most of them in Allgemeine Deutsche Biographie, edited by Historische Kommission bei der Königlichen Akademie der Wissenschaften, München (56 vols.; Berlin: Duncker & Humblot, 1981) [= ADB], and Neue Deutsche Biographie, edited by Historische Kommission der Bayerischen Akademie der Wissenschaften (25 vols. to date; Berlin: Duncker & Humblot, 1953–) [= NDB]. Chyträus: ADB 4, 254–6 (NDB 3, 254); Faber: ADB 6, 488–90; Garcaeus: ADB 8, 370–1; Mirus: ADB 22, 1; Musculus: ADB 23, 93–4 (NDB 18, 626–7). While Specker appears in Deutsches biographisches Archiv, edited by Fabian, Bernhard/Gorzny, Willy (microfiche edn; Munich: Saur, 1999–2002), I, 966 and II, 595, I have not been able to find any external information on Weiser. He was a pastor at Peritz, a village eighteen miles north of Meißen, Saxony, and flourished between 1577 and 1582.

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The works were largely written in German or, in the case of David Chyträus, translated into German. Generically, they are quite varied and include theological tracts, florilegia, devotional pieces as well as sermon sequences and catechisms. This body of literature is not only thematically and conceptually coherent, but most pieces are textually related. Later authors demonstrably drew on earlier texts. Such indebtedness is rarely acknowledged,9 and space does not permit me to present here the complex philological arguments required to prove the point.10 Leaving the claim at this state of suggestiveness, it may nevertheless offer helpful background information for an engagement with the selected texts, and I will repeatedly explore thematic connections between them.

Rational arguments The very concept of the soul to which all our writers subscribe, at least implicitly, includes the attribute of immortality, but that does not prevent them from arguing in favour of this concept, usually at the outset, as is witnessed by the title of my paper, borrowed from Melchior Specker11 but typical of the corpus as a whole. The ultimate trump card is always propositional revelation, but there is a variety of means to that end that deserve a closer look. For analytical purposes, I suggest a simple typology which distinguishes between rational – that is, reason-based – and theological arguments. The latter can be further subdivided into arguments

9 Weiser’s open use of Mirus’s Regensburg Sermons is atypical. He also references Faber’s ‘golden booklet’, ‘gülden Büchlein’ in Gregor Weiser, Christlicher Bericht / Von vnsterbligkeit unnd Zustand der Seelen nach jrem Abschied / vnnd letzten Hendeln der Welt. Sampt gründlicher vnd ausführlicher erklerung aus den Schrifften der Veter / Jtem Herrn D. Martini Lutheri / Johannis Mathesij / D. Martini Miri / vnd Johannis Gigantis / Jn Frag vnd Antwort (Bautzen: Michael Wolrab, 1583), B13r; cf. Philip V. Brady, ‘Notes on a Preacher’s Repertory: Ambrosius Taurer’s Bußruffer (1596)’, Modern Language Review 66 (1971) 826–31, on 828. 10 See Gábor Ittzés, ‘The Renewal of the Immortality Doctrine in the Reformation: The Case of Martin Mirus, Gregor Weiser, and Moses Pflacher’, in Hoppál, K. Bulcsú (ed.), Theories and Trends in Religions and in the Study of Religion: Selected Papers of the 10th Conference of the European Association for the Study of Religions (Budapest: L’Harmattan, 2015) 61–85; Gábor Ittzés, ‘Text and Subtext: Johannes Garcaeus’ Sterbbüchlein and Melchior Specker’s Vom Leiblichen Todt: A Study in Early Modern Literary Borrowing’, German Life and Letters 68 (2015) 335–55; Gábor Ittzés, ‘The Legacy of a Strasbourg Preacher: Melchior Specker’s Vom Leiblichen Todt as an Unknown Source of Basilius Faber’s Tractetlein von den Seelen der Verstorbenen’, Journal of Early Modern Christianity 3 (2016) 239–69. 11 Melchior Specker, Vom Leiblichen Todt. Was er sey / waher er komme / vnd wie man sich darzu˚ bereyten sole / Auch Von der Begräbniß vñ Begäncknussen / vnd wie man sich der Abgestorbenen halben trösten vnd halten solle. Jtem Von der Selen vnd jrem ort / stand / vnd wesen / biß auff den Jüngsten tag. Alles auß H. Schrifft / vnd der Vätter außlegung / fleyssig zu˚sammen gebracht (Strasbourg: Samuel Emmel, 1560), 221v.

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based on dogmatic considerations, church history broadly understood and revelation.12 Rational arguments represent the minority, and are certainly not engaged in by all authors. In fact, most of those writers who do not avoid the approach altogether rarely go beyond a mere assertion that pagan philosophers also arrived at the conclusion of immortality, and hardly ever give any hint, let alone account, of the ancients’ actual line of thought. This is the strategy employed by Andreas Musculus,13 Martin Mirus,14 Moses Pflacher,15 and Gregor Weiser,16 who differ only in their lists of representative authorities and their categorisation of them, which ranges from an all-inclusive ‘the pagans’ (‘die Heiden’) in Musculus through Pflacher’s ‘majority’ (‘etliche vnnd der mehrertheil vnder den Heyden’) to Mirus’s ‘more reasonable’ (‘vernünfftiger’), which is repeated by Weiser. Musculus names no names; Mirus and Weiser both cite Xenophon’s Cyrus and Cicero; Pflacher mentions Plato, Cicero and Seneca. Plato, Xenophon’s Cyrus and Cicero all made distinguished appearances in Melanchthon,17 the likely source for these authors. It is nevertheless noteworthy that Musculus and Pflacher, who declare pagan arguments to be irrefutable18 – another point borrowed from Melanchthon19 –, still do not care to give the slightest clue as to what they might have been but proceed straight to scripture. Weiser’s case is equally telling. His work is rather repetitive on the whole because he first makes his point in response to the given catechetical question 12 A particular type of consideration derived from the phenomenological kinship between death and sleep is so complex that it must receive independent treatment elsewhere, cf. Gábor Ittzés, ‘Somnus mortis imago: Az alvás mint a halál metaforája a 16. század második felének német evangélikus teológiájában’, Theologiai Szemle 57 (2014) 196–205. 13 Andreas Musculus, Gelegenheit / Thun vnd Wesen der Verstorbenen / von jrem Abschied an / aus diesem Leben / bis zum eingang / nach gehaltenem Jüngsten Gericht / zum ewigen Leben (Frankfurt a. d. Oder: Johann Eichorn, 1565), B6v–B7r. 14 Martin Mirus, Sieben Christliche Predigten Auff dem Reichstage zu Regenspurg gethan / als Anno 1575. vnser aller Gnedigster Keiser Rudolphus II. zum Reich erwehlet worden / etc. Dorinnen die furnemesten Artickel vnser waren Christlichen Religion ausführlich erkleret / vnd die jrrige Meinung falscher Lehre vnd Abgötterey des Bapstums mit sattem Grunde widerleget worden (Erfurt: Esaias Mechler, 1590), N2r. 15 Moses Pflacher, Die gantze Lehr Vom Tod vnd Absterben des Menschen / in ein richtige ordnung Kurtz verfasset / vnd gepredigt (Herborn: Christoph Rab, 1589), 261. 16 Gregor Weiser, Christlicher Bericht / Von Vnsterbligkeit und Zustand der Seelen nach jhrem Abschied / Vnd letzten Hendeln der Welt. Sampt gründlicher vnd ausführlicher erklerung aus den Schrifften der Veter / Jtem Herrn D.Matrini Lvtheri, Iohannis Mathesii, D.Martini Miri, vnd Iohannis Gigantis, Jn Frag vnd Antwort (Eisleben: Andreas Petri/Leipzig: Henning Grosse, 1588), 9. 17 Melanchthon, Commentarius, 307, 312, and Melanchthon, Melanchthon Reader, 287–8. 18 Musculus, Gelegenheit / Thun vnd Wesen der Verstorbenen, B6v: ‘unwidersprechlich’, ‘so stark vnd krefftig/ das […] nicht zu wider sprechen’; Pflacher, Die gantze Lehr Vom Tod vnd Absterben des Menschen, 261: ‘mit unwidertreiblichen argumenten’. 19 Melanchthon, Commentarius, 313; cf. Melanchthon, Melanchthon Reader, 287.

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(the basic unit of his work), and then cites supporting evidence usually from Mirus – from whom his content material was derived in the first place – and thus traverses the same ground twice. On this particular point, however, he essentially repeats himself three times.20 After a review of the doctrine’s deniers (typical of the corpus), he states his case (i. e. that the soul is immortal), buttresses it with biblical prooftexts, then, as if drawing the conclusion from what has just been said, he repeats the immortality thesis and proceeds to provide further scriptural evidence. After all this, he turns to Mirus and cites him at length, beginning with his review of the deniers and so on. What stands out in this seemingly endless circularity is the absence of any reference to pagan thought outside the direct quotation from Mirus. In those parts of the text that he himself shaped, he refrained from touching upon the subject. In fact, Weiser is the most independent of his sources on exactly this point. Johannes Garcaeus goes a significant step further but does not develop the insight. In a passage that may have been inspired by Musculus at the beginning of the immortality chapter,21 Garcaeus asserts the strength of pagan arguments for the soul’s immortality but, like every other author, quickly shifts approaches, and moves to scriptural grounds. Writing on the appearance of ghosts, however, he observes that just as the righteous souls remain in their appointed place, the souls of the damned also stay put and fearfully await the great day, on which the Lord will appear and hand over all the godless with body and soul to the devil for eternal torture and pain. Philosophers know nothing of this great transformation, although they partly conclude from rational causes that the soul is immortal because it possesses a heavenly nature and being, but it is ridiculous and impossible for them to believe that the decayed flesh should also share and be dressed in immortality.22

Here, then, we finally have a glimpse of what kind of rational reflection may lead to the desired conclusion, namely, an analysis of the soul’s nature. Unfortunately, Garcaeus does not continue this line of reasoning, but we may make a shrewd guess that he is taking his clue from Melanchthon, who not only elaborated on such Platonic arguments in his Aristotle commentary but also made exactly the 20 Weiser, Christlicher Bericht (1588), 1–14. 21 Cf. Johannes Garcaeus, Jr., Sterbbüchlein Darin Von den Seelen / jrem ort / stande / thun und wesen / aller Menschen / bis an den Jüngsten tag / aus Gottes wort vnd der lieben Veter Schrifften / warhafftiger bericht (Wittenberg: Peter Seitz, 1573), C6r–C7r and Musculus, Gelegenheit / Thun vnd Wesen der Verstorbenen, B7r–B8v. 22 Garcaeus, Sterbbüchlein, L5v: ‘…des grossen tags/an welchem der HERR erscheinen wird / vnd alle Gottlosen mit Leib vnd Seele dem Teuffel zu ewiger tortur vnd marter vbergeben. Von dieser verenderung wissen die Philosophi gar nichts / ob sie schon ein teils schliessen aus vernünfftigen vrsachen / die seel sey vnsterblich / dieweil sie eine Himlische natur vnd wesen an sich hat / dennoch ist dis jnen lecherlich vnd zu gleuben vnmüglich / das das verfaulte fleisch / auch die vnsterbligkeit besitzen vnd anziehen solle’ (my translation).

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same generalising point. It is all the more likely that Garcaeus is drawing on his former teacher since the central claim of this passage is identical to Melanchthon’s mature position in the Liber de anima (1553).23 Reason may have guided pagan philosophers to a recognition of the soul’s immortality, but knowledge of the body’s resurrection is available only in revelation. Quite significantly, the nature-of-the-soul argument and the juxtaposition of immortality with resurrection in terms of reason and revelation also occur together in the same short passage in Melanchthon: The philosophers have said nothing of the resurrection of bodies that the divine voice most plainly revealed. But if some people believe that after death another life is to follow, they think that souls only survive, since they seem to agree that they are made up of a heavenly nature and not of the elements.24

Given their personal connections, it is not to be wondered at that Garcaeus should have picked up Melanchthon’s point. It is more surprising, on the contrary, that he does not run with it but leaves it at this incipient stage, despite the fact that the above passage stands in the introduction of philosophical arguments in the Liber. On the whole, then, there is a clearly perceptible reluctance to approach the question of the soul’s immortality under the aegis of reason.25 Only the most highly educated do that, and Chyträus, an intellectual giant, is alone in deploying rational arguments in any significant and sustained fashion. His review of philosophical proofs comes in the second major thematic unit of his chapter where he is concerned with establishing the soul’s immortality, after an introduction that contained a general reflection on the definition and origin of the soul. The transition from scripture to philosophy is introduced with the metaphor of a ship held by two anchors.26 Reason is accorded a very high place here, 23 On the development of Melanchthon’s thought between the two major editions of De anima, see Gábor Ittzés, ‘A Commentariustól a Liberig: Melanchthon a lélek halhatatlanságáról’, Egyháztörténeti Szemle 14 (2013) 46–67. 24 Melanchthon, Melanchthon Reader, 286. 25 It is worth noting here that in the texts of the very same group of authors as discussed here the beautiful green meadow, or the Elysian Fields of pagan thought, appeared in the context of biblical names for the soul’s interim abode. Garcaeus (Sterbbüchlein, G4v) dismissed them as fable. Mirus in Sieben Christliche Predigten, N3v–N4r and, following him, Pflacher in Die gantze Lehr Vom Tod vnd Absterben des Menschen, 262 and Weiser in Christlicher Bericht (1588), 16 interpreted them as a faint echo of the ‘doctrine of the patriarchs’ (‘der Altveter Lehre’). Only Musculus (Gelegenheit / Thun vnd Wesen der Verstorbenen, D1v) went as far as to acknowledge them, in effect, as independent evidence, but ultimately he also classified them as ‘uncertain tales and fables’ (‘vngewisse geticht vnd Fabel’). 26 David Chyträus, Christlicher, Tröstlicher und in Gottes Wort gegründter unterricht. I. Von Unsterbligkeit der Seelen und jhrem Zustand nach dem Leibstodt. II. Von dem Fegefewr. III. Vom Ende der Welt und Auferstehung der Todten. IIII. Vom Jüngsten Gericht. V. Von der Ewigen Marter und Pein der Gottlosen in der Helle (Frankfurt a. d. Oder: Johann and Friedrich Hartmann and Nikolaus Voltz, 1592), B6v–B7r.

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higher in fact than by Melanchthon, for it is now apparently understood to contribute to faith. Chyträus enumerates six arguments for the immortality of the soul, taken from pagan philosophy.27 He derives them from Plato via Cicero, whom he follows relatively closely.28 He argues from the wisdom of the ancients, from universal consensus, from the movement of the elements, from the self-moved mover, from the noncomposite nature of the soul, and lastly from deficient recompense for the pious in this life. The first two are essentially arguments from authority;29 the next three, metaphysical (based on the nature of the soul); and the last is a variety of the moral argument, which Chyträus sees as much more clearly attested to by the example of the church’s martyrs from Abel to John the Baptist to Christ and the apostles. Melanchthon, drawing on the same classical authorities, elaborated on the last two of those points,30 and he also mentioned Christ, John the Baptist, Paul (that is, an apostle), and Abel in close proximity to each other in the context of the latter. Chyträus undoubtedly knew the Liber, and he may have been inspired by Melanchthon’s chapter on immortality. If so, he seems to be outdoing his teacher, yet even here there are clear tendencies that subtly undercut the force of reason. Chyträus does not scruple to challenge, if not demolish, rational arguments that support his case if he finds them ill-founded. Thus he objects to the fourth argument, the soul as the source of its own movement, a favourite with Cicero, that animals’ souls should also be held eternal by the same logic. The key lies in a distinction between moving in and moving of itself (or having the source of movement in itself and moving by itself). God alone satisfies the stricter requirement, and is alone eternal. In the Commentarius, it took Melanchthon some conscious self-restraint – which left its mark on the text – not to be carried away with the Platonic argument from the simple (noncomposite) nature of the soul. He was more reserved in the Liber, but when Chyträus remarks on the same point that Cicero, like Plato, held this reasoning to be decisive and immune to refutation, one even senses some slight distancing from the triumphalism of the ancient authors. Further, the immortality section (within Chyträus’s chapter on immortality) has a threefold structure.31 First comes biblical evidence, followed by arguments 27 Ibid., B7v–C3r. 28 Cf. Cicero, On Old Age in Letters of Marcus Tullius Cicero: With His Treatises on Friendship and Old Age (New York: Collier, 1909), sec. 21, para. 51. 29 Cicero also clearly marks them off as of a different kind, ‘Nor is it only reason and arguments that have brought me to this belief, but the great fame and authority of the most distinguished philosophers’. 30 Melanchthon, Commentarius, 304–8, 312; Melanchthon, Melanchthon Reader, 287–8. 31 Chyträus, Christlicher, Tröstlicher und in Gottes Wort gegründter unterricht, B4v–C5v.

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from reason, and finally the reverse side of the philosophical coin, the catalogue of dubious half-way positions. His logic is thus the opposite of the standard approach, which begins with the deniers to whom the best of pagan thinkers are opposed and ends with revelation, which trumps all. The result is that the overall movement of his argument is not from the poverty to the excellence of rational thought but vice versa, and scripture not simply corroborates what the best minds have in any case known but leads the way, and reason is relegated to a position of providing secondary supporting evidence.32 Here he is quite close to Melanchthon, who found a similar overarching scheme for his material when he rearranged it for the Liber. After the introduction, he also turns first to biblical prooftexts, then moves to philosophical arguments, dedicating most space to the three most powerful ones, and then concluding with a brief discussion of Aristotle. It might also be added that Chyträus’s whole reflection on rational arguments is, unlike Melanchthon’s, but a small fraction of the entire chapter, and at that level pure philosophy is certainly no match for revelation-based reasoning. This is not to deny the force of the metaphor of double anchoring, but merely to put it in perspective. Chyträus undoubtedly assigns a higher role to reason in the discussion of the soul’s immortality than anyone else in the later sixteenth century, but even he limits its scope. Be that as it may, the Rostock theologian is an exception, whose approach is not shared by the others. They are content to confine themselves to theological arguments proper.

Theological arguments These fall into three broad categories that I have termed doctrinal, church historical, and revelatory. They do not appear under those headings in the texts, nor are they clear-cut but might overlap at the edges, yet the labels are useful analytical tools, not least because they help show the fluidity of the original categories. Developmentally, there is a trajectory that derives from Specker and includes the first and last types, while historical arguments can be traced back, to a large extent, to Garcaeus, who may have been inspired by Musculus. Melchior Specker organised his arguments into four rubrics, from creation, redemption, divine judgement and conscience (treated together), and, finally, specific witnesses and revelations.33 The fourth is quite transparently a code name for straightforward prooftexting and includes the most important of the relevant biblical passages, which might actually include some – such as the fate of 32 The discussion is finally rounded off with a return to biblical prooftexts, which thus bracket the entire philosophical analysis (ibid., C5v–C8r). 33 Specker, Vom Leiblichen Todt, 222r–224r.

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Lazarus’s soul in Luke 16:22 – that could also be categorised, in sixteenth-century understanding, as ‘historical’. A similar list, with more or less significant modifications, recurs in numerous later authors. Faber, for example, follows his source quite faithfully, with two exceptions. On the one hand, he omits Specker’s (Latin) overtitle ‘from redemption’, and simply speaks of arguments from Christ’s suffering and death. On the other hand, he omits conscience from the third type.34 He is the only one to take up this line from Specker. All the others opt for focussing on conscience and omitting arguments from God’s judgement, thereby shifting from doctrinal to revelatory types in terms of my analytical labels. The novelty of Musculus’s approach is that he argues from examples.35 He still uses biblical evidence but he presents it not under doctrinal but under historical headings. (He also has a section on propositional revelation with the usual loci that he offers as a confirmation of the examples.) He begins with Abel, interpreting his blood crying out to God (Gen 4:10) metonymically rather than metaphorically. Though already killed by Cain, Abel (represented by his blood) still speaks (taken literally) to God and must, therefore, be alive. Musculus continues with Enoch, Elijah, and Christ as examples provided by God in the three ages of the world, before the flood, between Noah and Christ, and from the incarnation. That I list these stories as ‘church historical evidence’ is no oversight. Following Luther, it is customary in Reformation and post-Reformation theology to speak of the Old Testament Church and consider all those who believed even before the time of Jesus as members of the one Catholic Church, and the historicity of the biblical narrative had, of course, not yet been questioned, in the sense of Lessing’s ‘broad ugly ditch’. Further, as witnessed by Protestant martyrologies of the early modern age, or, indeed, the Magdeburg Centuries (1559–74), church history was an auxiliary discipline to theology in a very different sense than in later periods. One should bear in mind the fact that in Melanchthon’s Commentarius there is a comparable list which includes Abel, Enoch, Elijah and Christ, with the prophets and patriarchs raised with him.36 There are some differences, however. These figures are not named as examples but as teachers of the doctrine. The point concerning Abel is not his blood crying out. On the contrary, in Melanchthon’s reading it is God who preaches future punishment for the wicked and reward for the pious. Christ is not singled out in the New Testament but is 34 Basilius Faber, Tractetlein von den Seelen der Verstorbenen / vnd allem jhrem zustand vnd gelegenheit, in Faber, Basilius, Christliche / nötige vnd nützliche vnterrichtungen / von den letzten hendeln der Welt. Auffs new zum fünfften mahl gemehret vnd gebessert (Leipzig: Hans Steinmann and Ernst Vögelin, 1572) Y1r–C5v, on Y4v–Y6r. 35 Musculus, Gelegenheit / Thun vnd Wesen der Verstorbenen, B6r–C8v, especially B7r–B8v. 36 Melanchthon, Commentarius, 305–7.

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mentioned together with those he brought back to life, and this is how the patriarchs earn a mention as part of the group he raised and took with him to heaven. Further, by the time it reaches the Liber (1553), the list all but disintegrates and can support claims of direct textual influence only if acquaintance with the earlier version of the text is also presupposed. Even so, the sequence of names is fairly similar in the Commentarius and in Musculus, and it is not entirely impossible that Melanchthon’s work may have played a role in the development of this line of reasoning. Also noteworthy is the fact that Musculus cites the above examples of bodily transference in the context of the soul’s immortality. They are introduced as evidence that ‘after this life there is another life, and human beings are not quite extinguished after their death like other, unreasonable animals’.37 The latter clause is virtually synonymous with an affirmation of the soul’s continued existence, but the reference to another life is broader and includes resurrection and a post-doomsday existence understood realistically. To the epochal examples are then added the patriarchs, of whom it is repeatedly stated that they have been gathered to their fathers or people.38 If gathered, they must be alive, and if to a people, they must exist somewhere. Taking his clues from Specker and Musculus, Garcaeus enumerates nine proofs,39 beginning with creation and redemption; he then moves to Christ’s resurrection. What, if anything, inspired this item is not obvious, and it may very well be Garcaeus’s own personal contribution. Structurally, this argument replaces Specker’s reasoning from judgement as third on the list. (The other three of Garcaeus’s first four points, including the robust prooftexts of special revelation as fourth, are identical to Specker’s.) Garcaeus clearly drops the first element of Specker’s conjoined pair of judgement and conscience and, unlike Faber, runs with the second, which he includes on its own as the ninth, and last, argument on his list. He also revises Musculus’s list of examples (Abel, Enoch, Elijah, Christ and the patriarchs) by augmenting it at three points. With Christ, he includes those raised with him;40 immediately thereafter he adds the story of 37 Musculus, Gelegenheit / Thun vnd Wesen der Verstorbenen, B7v: ‘Das auch nach diesem lebe¯ sey / vñ die mensch en nicht gar zu nicht werden / nach jrem ab sterben / wie andere / vnuernunfftige Thier’ (my translation). 38 Cf. Gen 15:15, 25:8, 25:17, 35:29, 49:33; Num 20:26; Deut 32:50; 2 Chron 34:28. 39 Garcaeus, Sterbbüchlein, C3r–D2v. 40 On this minor exegetical point he is a typical representative of sixteenth-century Lutheranism. Despite the clarity of the Matthean account (‘Then Jesus cried again with a loud voice and breathed his last. At that moment the curtain of the temple was torn in two, from top to bottom. The earth shook, and the rocks were split. The tombs also were opened, and many bodies of the saints who had fallen asleep were raised. After his resurrection they came out of the tombs and entered the holy city and appeared to many’, Matt 27:50–3) that the saints were raised at the time of Jesus’s death and they appeared in Jerusalem after his resurrection, the

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transfiguration and, at the end, appends the Lazarus of the parable. This may be read to shift the profile of the catalogue towards human examples motivated by a sense of dissatisfaction with Christ’s simple inclusion as one of several comparable items in a list. The Son of God deserves more singular attention, Garcaeus may have felt, and thus singled out his resurrection as an example sui generis which must be enumerated on its own. Garcaeus may ultimately be indebted to Melanchthon on this point. The immortality chapter of the Liber began with Christ’s resurrection, and Garcaeus’s third argument is reminiscent of Melanchthon’s opening lines: The third argument one should take from the resurrection of the Lord Christ, for the most beautiful witness of the immortality and of life eternal is presented by the happy resurrection from the dead and victorious triumph of Jesus Christ our Saviour. Otherwise why is my true Messiah risen, and for what reason did he present himself in various ways as alive for a whole forty days? Only in order to prove in these happy encounters and triumphal synod that he was truly alive and that his body in which he lived and lay in the grave before was again united with his soul as he had truly magnificently prophesied it in Psalm 16.41

Garcaeus is remaining in line with a mainstream Lutheran interpretive tradition when he understands Psalm 16 as a Christological text, but his prooftext deserves special attention. Psalm 16, especially verse 11,42 is a popular text in the corpus – Garcaeus himself quotes it a couple more times – but its context is always the life of the blessed souls or their wakeful existence.43 This is the only instance when it appears in a discussion of the arguments for the soul’s immortality, and it is no passage is uniformly understood as dating their resurrection to Easter. It is 1 Cor 15:20 that is brought to bear on the interpretation and, in fact, trumps the Gospel text. If Christ was ‘the first fruits of those who have died’, nobody can have been raised before him. 41 Garcaeus, Sterbbüchlein, C5rv: ‘DAs dritte Argument sol man nemen aus des HErrn Christi aufferstehung/Denn das aller schönste gezeugnis der vnsterbligkeit vnd vom ewigen leben/ stellet vns für des Heilandes Jhesu Christi fröliche Aufferweckung von todten vnd sieghafftiger triumph/ Warumb ist sonst mein getrewer Messias aufferstanden/vñ aus was vrsachen hat er sich lebendig dargestellet durch mancherley weise gantzer viertzig tage? allein in diese¯ frölichen gesperch vnd Synodo triumphali zuerweisen/ das er warhafftig lebe/vnd das sein Cörper/darin er zuuor g[e]lebet/ vnd im grabe geruhet / mit der Seelen widerumb vereiniget/ wie dauon im 16.Psalm gar herrlich geweissagt’ (my translation). Cf. Melanchthon, Melanchthon Reader, 284: ‘A shining testimony that perpetual life follows after this mortal life is that the Son of God our Lord Jesus Christ was crucified and died and later rose again. And so that he not be thought an illusion, after forty days he appeared familiarly to his apostles and showed many others that he had truly revived, and further that his soul was truly joined to the body in which he had lived’ (Ps 16:11). 42 ‘You show me the path of life. In your presence there is fullness of joy; in your right hand are pleasures for evermore’. 43 Cf. Specker, Vom Leiblichen Todt, 263r; Garcaeus, Sterbbüchlein, M6r, O2v; Mirus, Sieben Christliche Predigten, O2v; Weiser, Christlicher Bericht (1588), 27, quoting Mirus; and Pflacher, Die gantze Lehr Vom Tod vnd Absterben des Menschen, 272.

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accident that it is introduced via Christology. Though the psalm is not cited in Melanchthon’s immortality chapter, the Praeceptor includes it in the resurrection chapter of the Loci communes and comments, ‘David is talking about Christ and including the members of Christ, namely all believers’.44 It is a Christological passage, but as such it pertains to Christians as well.45 Finally, it might also be significant that Melanchthon cites Jude 14–15, and cites it in the context of prophecy like Garcaeus. He argues that the doctrine of the afterlife is ‘proper to the Church, and often thence resounds to the first Fathers of the Church, as the speech of Enoch recited in the Letter of Jude […]. And in the sermons of the prophets these doctrines were thereafter repeated’.46 That might be as close as we can come to identifying the formative influences on Garcaeus at this point,47 and it is certainly possible that some combination of these factors was at work. Undoubtedly, Garcaeus does not slavishly follow his sources, but proves rather creative and original in his adaptations. The general tenor of his alterations is Christological. It has also transpired that Garcaeus is the first author to deploy the full array of arguments from all three types I have identified.48 Martin Mirus also reshuffles Specker’s arguments, and he is the first to bring out the full systematic potential of his source.49 He begins by affirming that the word of God teaches the soul’s immortality, which I take to be a variation on Specker’s fourth argument, from specific texts, particularly as there is considerable overlap between their prooftexts. That Mirus also includes the passage on Abel’s blood here is an early signal that he will not follow the Musculus-Garcaeus line as regards examples. Next come Specker’s (and Garcaeus’s) first two points, 44 Philip Melanchthon, Melanchthon on Christian Doctrine: Loci Communes 1555, edited by Manschreck, Clyde L. (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Book House, 1982), 283. 45 A somewhat differently oriented Christological interpretation of Psalm 16 Garcaeus may have picked up without much effort from Specker, whose unparalleled excursus on Christ’s descent to hell not only opens with verses 9–10 of this psalm but also includes a substantial portion of Luther’s commentary on it from his second lecture series on the Psalter (Specker, Vom Leiblichen Todt, 244v, 246v–247v, cf. WA 5, 463, Operationes in psalmos, 1519–21, on Ps 16:10). 46 Melanchthon, Melanchthon Reader, 284–5. 47 In the light of this evidence, it is not altogether to be excluded that Garcaeus took his list of examples directly from Melanchthon rather than via Musculus. Two considerable objections might be made, however. First, here we saw a connection between the Sterbbüchlein and the Liber, while the list from Abel to Christ and the patriarchs presupposes a correspondence not so much with the revised version of De anima as with the Commentarius. Second, Garcaeus is closer to Musculus than either of them is to Melanchthon. 48 Arguments from creation and redemption would count as doctrinal; examples adapted and expanded from Musculus, Christ’s resurrection and the martyrs, as church historical; and specific loci, prophecy, Revelation 6 and 20 as revelatory, under which heading conscience might also be included as a unique case of general revelation. 49 Mirus, Sieben Christliche Predigten, N1v–N3v.

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creation and redemption, but with a twist. Mirus is just as unhappy with judgement as the third item as Garcaeus was, but he rectifies it differently. Instead of replacing it with Christ’s resurrection, he adds sanctification, thus completing the argument that we are created, redeemed, and sanctified for life eternal. Mirus explicitly unites these three points under the doctrinal heading that, in addition to the word of God, the three articles of the Creed also teach the immortality of the soul. That he then proceeds to cite, after brief introductory remarks, Bible verses rather than creedal formulas indicates, on the one hand, that evangelical theology of the early confessional age is first and foremost biblical theology and, on the other, that Luther’s mature position, worked out in his treatise On the Councils and the Church (1539)50 – that the only source of Christian dogma is the Bible, and conciliar pronouncements, including the ecumenical creeds, can be nothing other than restatements of scriptural truth – has established itself among his followers. After revelatory and doctrinal arguments, Mirus does move to church historical ones, but he is content with the martyrs, and excludes the list of examples we saw in Musculus and Garcaeus. This, however, is not to be taken for an early sign of the compartmentalisation of church history in the modern sense. Garcaeus, who introduced the topic, spoke only of the martyrs without any concrete supporting evidence. Mirus, by contrast, appends here a short list of New Testament passages, especially Hebrews 11:37–40. He, however, does not marshal properly church historical evidence such as patristic stories or medieval hagiographies, either. His last argument is from conscience where he, like Garcaeus, quotes no prooftexts but simply reasons that even the most obstinate sinners must recognise before their end that everything does not end with death and that punishment awaits them. The structure of Pflacher’s arguments,51 including his prooftexts, is identical with Mirus’s, but he omits the doctrinal points completely and includes only specific biblical loci, the death and blood of martyrs, and conscience. Interestingly, his list of prooftexts is longer than Mirus’s, and contains references not only to the patriarchs and to the souls beneath the altar but also to David, Christ and Stephen, who, upon dying, commended their souls to the hands of God. Those examples partly occur elsewhere in lists of examples I have called church historical, and are partly quite new. It is not very difficult to see the logic behind the extension in that the last group is also a type within the historical example category. That the whole list is recontextualised as part of propositional revelation may have been prompted by Mirus, who moves the truncated catalogue of Garcaeus’s examples under that heading, although Pflacher ultimately retains the 50 LW 41, 3–178 = WA 50, 488–653. 51 Pflacher, Die gantze Lehr Vom Tod vnd Absterben des Menschen, 256–9.

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patriarchs and omits Abel. Be that as it may, the rearrangement surely demonstrates that the dividing lines between the various types of arguments were rather fluid. The last author to be considered is Weiser, for although Chyträus, as we have seen, goes beyond everyone else in deploying reason-based arguments, his reversal of the overall structure of argumentation (from revelation to reason to the limits of reason) has the corollary that he limits himself to a catalogue of familiar prooftexts from scripture and does not offer other theological arguments. Weiser52 imitates the Regensburg Sermons rather closely, on the one hand, but, on the other, seems to miss some important insights. He is usually repetitive and in the more independent part of his text lists roughly half a dozen prooftexts twice. They follow in the order of their biblical sequence, and the first group includes loci that had appeared in various rubrics in earlier authors,53 while the second gathers mostly those of the imposing propositional type.54 This whole section is introduced with the assertion that the word of God alone teaches us aright what we should believe and is followed by a long quotation from Mirus, with only a few, yet telling, emendations. Weiser arranges Mirus’s proofs into five units of the same order. They include the teaching of God’s word, the creation of humans, redemption, the death and blood of the martyrs and conscience. In other words, he omits sanctification completely, together with the references to the creed, and raises the original Speckerian points back to the first order of categorisation. It is noteworthy that Mirus’s more elegant solution should be rejected. Faber, whom Weiser admittedly knew but does not seem to imitate closely, might be in the background, for he is closer to Specker than Mirus is. Alternatively, and I find this more likely, a small irregularity in Mirus’s text may have led the pastor of Peritz astray.55 52 Weiser, Christlicher Bericht (1588), 3–14. 53 E. g. Gen 1:26 (creation), Gen 15:15 and 25:8 (patriarchs), Ps 31:6 (commending soul), Matt 22:32 (propositional revelation), etc. Incidentally, some of Weiser’s references include erroneous chapter numbers. 54 Matt 10:28; Luke 16:22, 23:43; Acts 7:59; Phil 1:23 and, without locus, Moses and Elijah of the transfiguration. 55 Cf. Mirus, Sieben Christliche Predigten, N2v–N3r and Weiser, Christlicher Bericht (1588), 10– 13. Mirus’s text includes printed marginal notes. It is also in the margin that he numbers his arguments. The single paragraph that contains the three entries for the creed carries the number ‘2’. Third way through the paragraph, in the line with the beginning of the argument from redemption, there stands the number ‘3’ in the margin. No marginalia correspond to the argument from sanctification that appears in the continuation of the paragraph, but the next paragraph, on the martyrs, also has a ‘3’ on the side. In my reading, the first ‘3’, next to redemption, is a mistake, since it should be numbered, following Mirus’s logic, ‘2.2’ or ‘2b’. Weiser, however, keeps ‘2’ for creation, with the creedal introduction omitted, and the first ‘3’ for redemption, which he, significantly, also breaks into a new paragraph. He then drops the part on sanctification and amends Mirus’s second ‘3’ to ‘4’ at the head of the martyrs

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Whatever the explanation, Mirus’s superior arrangement is ignored, and we end up with yet another slightly idiosyncratic list of arguments, although Weiser probably did not mean to change his source and was not aware of his own originality here. One should not overlook the fact that the very list is contained in a quotation, and where Weiser writes his own text, he does not mention arguments of any sort, but limits himself to plain biblical prooftexting. The strategy is conspicuous, for it is repeated twice. If we think back to the authors previously discussed, the spectrum extends from Weiser to Chyträus, and the level of theological education seems clearly to correspond to the level of originality and argumentative freedom. The more educated and self-confident an author is, the more liberally he (always he) deploys arguments, including those based on reason rather than revelation. Conversely, the less prominent an author is, the closer he remains to the biblical evidence. Ultimately, the strongest arguments – for all authors – come from propositional revelation. They constitute the third subtype within the category of theological arguments and include such Gospel passages as Matthew 10:28,56 17:3,57 22:31–2,58 and Luke 16:22,59 23:43,60 or Pauline passages like Philippians 1:23,61 and lines from Revelation (e. g. 6:9–10).62 These loci are taken to be fairly self-evident, and are either simply listed without further comment or minimally interpreted by drawing out their implications, which were obvious to the authors and conducive to the immortality thesis. However, the other two theological subtypes are also essentially biblical in nature. We have seen how strong the

56 57 58 59 60 61 62

paragraph. Weiser did not, of course, work from Mirus’s 1590 printed edition, and it is a strong hypothesis that that is faithful – or at least more faithful than Weiser’s – to the manuscript that must have been used in the early 1580s. If I am right, however, it is a measure of Weiser’s mediocrity that he followed the prima facie numbers rather than the theological logic of his source, although he probably did not notice the discrepancy, and believed he had accurately reproduced Mirus’s text, except for the manuscript’s – to him obvious – errors. ‘Do not fear those who kill the body but cannot kill the soul; rather fear him who can destroy both soul and body in hell’ (Matt 10:28). ‘And behold, Moses and Elijah appeared to them, talking with Him’ (Matt 17:3). ‘And as for the resurrection of the dead, have you not read what was said to you by God, “I am the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob”? He is God not of the dead, but of the living’ (Matt 22:31–2). ‘The poor man died and was carried away by the angels to be with Abraham [Gk ‘to Abraham’s bosom’]’ (Luke 16:22). ‘He [Jesus] replied [to the criminal on the cross], “Truly I tell you, today you will be with me in Paradise”’ (Luke 23:43). ‘I am hard pressed between the two: my desire is to depart and be with Christ, for that is far better’ (Phil 1:23). ‘When the Lamb broke the fifth seal, I saw underneath the altar the souls of those who had been slain because of the word of God, and because of the testimony which they had maintained; and they cried out with a loud voice, saying, “How long, O Lord, holy and true, will You refrain from judging and avenging our blood on those who dwell on the earth?”’ (Rev 6:9–10).

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connection was between doctrinal arguments and the Bible, and church historical evidence is primarily derived from the Old and New Testaments and is rarely, if ever, drawn from extracanonical sources. That is an indication of how powerfully the scripture principle of the Reformation worked in the theological thinking of later sixteenth-century authors, but more proximately it exhibits the methodological influence of Melanchthon’s Loci, which uses Romans as the basis of systematic theological reflection.

Conclusion Several observations might be made in order to summarise the findings of the foregoing analysis of how later sixteenth-century Lutheran theologians sought to prove the soul’s immortality. First, while the immortality doctrine essentially requires some kind of argument to establish its basic claim, there is no real agreement on what, or what kind of, arguments may answer this purpose, except that it is biblical teaching. What changes from author to author are not only the specific details of individual arguments but the very types of reasoning. There is surely a discernible tradition deriving from Specker and, to a lesser degree, probably from Musculus, but each writer shapes it according to his preferences. What remains constant is the scriptural base, undoubtedly the heart of the matter for sixteenth-century Lutheran theologians. Specker’s theme is improved upon in various ways, which development, in my estimate, reaches its peak with Mirus, but his elegant creedal structure is not taken up. Nonetheless, the general tendency of the changes is Christological-Trinitarian with the judgement theme definitely receding. This seems to suggest an ultimate gospel, as opposed to law, orientation of the overall corpus. It would be difficult to deny Melanchthon’s influence on the whole tradition. Beyond the specific points of connection noted above, his Loci seem to provide the methodological inspiration for the entire undertaking, not to mention the fact that in his De anima he offered an early thematisation of the central issue. Significantly, the immortality of the soul is largely understood in ontological rather than relational terms in the corpus analysed, and this is again more Melanchthonian than Lutheran. The question is nowhere discussed in explicit terms (the very categories would probably be considered alien by contemporary authors), but Luther’s famous argument from God speaking to the soul63 – a hallmark of his approach – is never once mentioned in the texts, and the general tenor of the arguments is such that seems to presuppose an ontological view of the soul. 63 LW 5, 76 = WA 43, 481 (Genesisvorlesung, 1535–45, on Gen 26:24–5).

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Despite all these Melanchthonian traits, however, the whole corpus displays a profoundly Lutheran orientation. None of the authors is fully taken with Melanchthon’s enthusiasm for rational arguments. Chyträus is the only one to engage them in any depth, but ultimately even he keeps them at arm’s length. A telling detail is that while conscience as the third philosophical argument is treated in the context of reason in the Liber, it invariably appears in the framework of theological arguments in later sixteenth-century texts. Whatever place Melanchthon may have carved out for reason and philosophy in his theological enterprise, his students were not overly enthusiastic to fill it in. They followed the professor of the Old Testament rather than the professor of Greek, and proceeded quite exclusively along biblical lines. Finally, this fundamental scriptural orientation of the entire theological undertaking – a methodological manifestation of the sola scriptura principle – prompts us to return, beyond the material issues, to some undercurrents in the preceding argument concerning the context and production of this remarkable body of literature. I have suggested that, unsurprisingly, social-educational status and theological originality, the boldness of creative thinking, are connected. The less academically confident an author feels, the closer he stays to the safe biblical ground, and the less likely he is to make forays into constructive – as opposed to compilative – work. On the other hand, while the limitation of space has prevented me from going into philological detail, I deliberately tried to uncover the interconnectedness of the primary texts on a thematic/conceptual level. The available material does not allow for a simple straightforward narrative. Instead, there emerges a complex picture of consensus building through borrowing, adaptation, modification and reworking.64 What we see in these texts is the shared development, in this case by the Lutheran tradition, of a new understanding and clarification of a particular doctrinal point. More broadly, we can witness here an emergent confessional culture at work.

Bibliography Allgemeine Deutsche Biographie, edited by Historische Kommission bei der Königlichen Akademie der Wissenschaften, München (56 vols.; Berlin: Duncker & Humblot, 1981), available at http://www.deutsche-biographie.de [1. 10. 2018] [= ADB]. Althaus, Paul, ‘Die Unsterblichkeit der Seele bei Luther’, Zeitschrift für systematische Theologie 3 (1926) 725–34. Althaus, Paul, Die letzten Dinge: Entwurf einer christlichen Eschatologie (Gütersloh: Bertelsmann, 31926). 64 Cf. Kenneth G. Appold, Orthodoxie als Konsensbildung: Das theologische Disputationswesen an der Universität Wittenberg zwischen 1570 und 1710 (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2004).

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Appold, Kenneth G., Orthodoxie als Konsensbildung: Das theologische Disputationswesen an der Universität Wittenberg zwischen 1570 und 1710 (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2004). Brady, Philip V., ‘Notes on a Preacher’s Repertory: Ambrosius Taurer’s Bußruffer (1596)’, Modern Language Review 66 (1971) 826–31. Chyträus, David, De morte, et vita æterna (Wittenberg: Johann Krafft, Sr., 1581) = Verzeichnis der im deutschen Sprachbereich erschienenen Drucke des 16. Jahrhunderts, available at http://www.vd16.de/ [1. 10. 2018] [= VD16], C 2652. Chyträus, David, Altera pars Libelli Davidis Chytraei De Morte & vita æterna: continens locos DE Animarum Immortalitate et statu post corporis mortem. Purgatorio Animarum Pontificio. Fine Mundi et Resurrectione corporum. Extremo IVDICIO et Poenis INFERNI aeternis (Wittenberg: Johann Krafft, Sr., 1582) = VD16, ZV 3328. Chyträus, David, Christlicher / Tröstlicher und in Gottes Wort gegründetter vnterricht. Vom Tode und Ewigen Leben. Erstlich durch den Ehrwirdigen vnd Hochgelarten Herrn David Chytraevm, der heiligen Schrifft Doctorn, vnd Professorn zu Rosstock etc. in Lateinischer Sprach verfast / vnd an tag gegeben / Vnd von jhm jtzo auffs new vbersehen vnd gemehret / vnd auff desselbten erinnerung vnnd begeren mit bestem vleis verdeutscht. Durch Heinrich Räteln zu Sagan (Berlin: Johann and Friedrich Hartman, 1590) = VD16, C 2655. Chyträus, David, Christlicher, Tröstlicher und in Gottes Wort gegründter unterricht. I. Von Unsterbligkeit der Seelen und jhrem Zustand nach dem Leibstodt. II. Von dem Fegefewr. III. Vom Ende der Welt und Auferstehung der Todten. IIII. Vom Jüngsten Gericht. V. Von der Ewigen Marter und Pein der Gottlosen in der Helle (Frankfurt a. d. Oder: Johann and Friedrich Hartmann and Nikolaus Voltz, 1592) = VD16, C 2656. Cicero, On Old Age in Letters of Marcus Tullius Cicero: With His Treatises on Friendship and Old Age (New York: Collier, 1909). Denzinger, Heinrich, Enchiridion symbolorum definitionum et declarationum de rebus fidei et morum. Kompendium der Glaubensbekenntnisse und kirchlichen Lehrentscheidungen, edited by Hünermann, Peter/Hoping, Helmut (Freiburg: Herder, 402005) = Denzinger, Heinrich, The Sources of Catholic Dogma. Translated by Roy J. Deferrari from the Thirtieth Edition of Henry Denzinger’s Enchiridion Symbolorum (Saint Louis, MO: Herder, 1957). Faber, Basilius, Tractetlein von den Seelen der Verstorbenen / vnd allem jhrem zustand vnd gelegenheit, in Faber, Basilius, Christliche / nötige vnd nützliche vnterrichtungen / von den letzten hendeln der Welt. Auffs new zum fünfften mahl gemehret vnd gebessert (Leipzig: Hans Steinmann and Ernst Vögelin, 1572) Y1r–C5v = VD16, ZV 23365 = Bibliotheca Palatina: Druckschriften, Stampati Palatini, Printed Books, edited by Boyle, Leonard/Mittler, Elmar (microfiche edn; Munich: Saur, 1995) [= BPal], F2434. Deutsches biographisches Archiv, edited by Fabian, Bernhard/Gorzny, Willy (microfiche edn; Munich: Saur, 1999–2002), available at http://db.saur.de/WBIS [1. 10. 2018]. Frank, Günter, ‘Philipp Melanchthons. Idee von der Unsterblichkeit der menschlichen Seele’, Theologie und Philosophie 68 (1993) 349–67. Garcaeus, Johannes, Jr., Sterbbüchlein Darin Von den Seelen / jrem ort / stande / thun und wesen / aller Menschen / bis an den Jüngsten tag / aus Gottes wort vnd der lieben Veter Schrifften / warhafftiger bericht (Wittenberg: Peter Seitz, 1573) = VD16, G 461 = BPal, F720–1.

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Headley, John, ‘Luther and the Fifth Lateran Council’, Archiv für Reformationsgeschichte 64 (1973) 55–78. Ittzés, Gábor, ‘A Commentariustól a Liberig: Melanchthon a lélek halhatatlanságáról’, Egyháztörténeti Szemle 14 (2013) 46–67. Ittzés, Gábor, ‘Somnus mortis imago: Az alvás mint a halál metaforája a 16. század második felének német evangélikus teológiájában’, Theologiai Szemle 57/4 (2014) 196–204. Ittzés, Gábor, ‘The Renewal of the Immortality Doctrine in the Reformation: The Case of Martin Mirus, Gregor Weiser, and Moses Pflacher’, in Hoppál, K. Bulcsú (ed), Theories and Trends in Religions and in the Study of Religion: Selected Papers of the 10th Conference of the European Association for the Study of Religions (Budapest: L’Harmattan, 2015) 61–85. Ittzés, Gábor, ‘Text and Subtext: Johannes Garcaeus’ Sterbbüchlein and Melchior Specker’s Vom Leiblichen Todt: A Study in Early Modern Literary Borrowing’, German Life and Letters 68 (2015) 335–55. Ittzés, Gábor, ‘The Legacy of a Strasbourg Preacher: Melchior Specker’s Vom Leiblichen Todt as an Unknown Source of Basilius Faber’s Tractetlein von den Seelen der Verstorbenen’, Journal of Early Modern Christianity 3 (2016) 239–69. Köhler, Walther, Luther und die Kirchengeschichte: Nach seinen Schriften, zunächst bis 1521. Teil I, Abt. 1: Die Ablassinstruktion, die Bullen, Symbole, Concilien und die Mystiker (Hildesheim: Olms, 1984). Luther, Martin, Luther’s Works: American Edition, edited by Pelikan, Jaroslav/Lehmann, Helmut T. (55 vols.; Saint Louis, MO: Concordia and Philadelphia: Fortress, 1955–86) [= LW]. Luther, Martin, D. Martin Luthers Werke: Kritische Gesamtausgabe – Abteilung 1, Schriften (73 vols.; Weimar: H. Böhlau, 1883–2009) [= WA]. Melanchthon, Philip, Commentarius de anima (Strasbourg: Kraft Müller, 1544) = VD16, M 2753. Melanchthon, Philip, Melanchthon on Christian Doctrine: Loci Communes 1555, edited by Manschreck, Clyde L. (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Book House, 1982). Melanchthon, Philip, A Melanchthon Reader (New York: Peter Lang, 1988). Melanchthon, Philip, Philippi Melanchthonis Opera quae supersunt omnia (Corpus Reformatorum, series I), edited by Bretschneider, Karl G./Bindseil, Heinrich E. (28 vols.; Halle: Schwetschke & Sohn, 1834–60). Mirus, Martin, Sieben Christliche Predigten Auff dem Reichstage zu Regenspurg gethan / als Anno 1575. vnser aller Gnedigster Keiser Rudolphus II. zum Reich erwehlet worden / etc. Dorinnen die furnemesten Artickel vnser waren Christlichen Religion ausführlich erkleret / vnd die jrrige Meinung falscher Lehre vnd Abgötterey des Bapstums mit sattem Grunde widerleget worden (Erfurt: Esaias Mechler, 1590) = VD16, M 5471. Musculus, Andreas, Gelegenheit / Thun vnd Wesen der Verstorbenen / von jrem Abschied an / aus diesem Leben / bis zum eingang / nach gehaltenem Jüngsten Gericht / zum ewigen Leben (Frankfurt a. d. Oder: Johann Eichorn, 1565) = VD16, M 7151 = BPal, F522–3. Neue Deutsche Biographie, edited by Historische Kommission der Bayerischen Akademie der Wissenschaften (25 vols. to date; Berlin: Duncker & Humblot, 1953–), available at http://www.deutsche-biographie.de/ [1. 10. 2018] [= NDB]. Pflacher, Moses, Die gantze Lehr Vom Tod vnd Absterben des Menschen / in ein richtige ordnung Kurtz verfasset / vnd gepredigt (Herborn: Christoph Rab, 1589) = VD16, P 2388.

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Specker, Melchior, Vom Leiblichen Todt. Was er sey / waher er komme / vnd wie man sich darzu˚ bereyten solle / Auch Von der Begräbniß vñ Begäncknussen / vnd wie man sich der Abgestorbenen halben trösten vnd halten solle. Jtem Von der Selen vnd jrem ort / stand / vnd wesen/biß auff den Jüngsten tag. Alles auß H. Schrifft / vnd der Vätter außlegung / fleyssig zu˚sammen gebracht (Strasbourg: Samuel Emmel, 1560) = VD16, S 8169 = BPal, F3819–20. Stange, Carl, ‘Die Unsterblichkeit der Seele’, Zeitschrift für systematische Theologie 2 (1925) 431–63. Stange, Carl, Die Unsterblichkeit der Seele (Gütersloh: Bertelsmann, 1925). Stange, Carl, ‘Zur Auslegung der Aussagen Luthers über die Unsterblichkeit der Seele’, Zeitschrift für systematische Theologie 3 (1926) 735–84. Stange, Carl, ‘Luther und das fünfte Laterankonzil’, Zeitschrift für systematische Theologie 6 (1928) 339–444. Weiser, Gregor, Christlicher Bericht / Von vnsterbligkeit unnd Zustand der Seelen nach jrem Abschied / vnnd letzten Hendeln der Welt. Sampt gründlicher vnd ausführlicher erklerung aus den Schrifften der Veter / Jtem Herrn D. Martini Lutheri / Johannis Mathesij / D. Martini Miri / vnd Johannis Gigantis / Jn Frag vnd Antwort (Bautzen: Michael Wolrab, 1583) = VD16, ZV 18596. Weiser, Gregor, Christlicher Bericht / Von Vnsterbligkeit und Zustand der Seelen nach jhrem Abschied / Vnd letzten Hendeln der Welt. Sampt gründlicher vnd ausführlicher erklerung aus den Schrifften der Veter / Jtem Herrn D.Matrini Lvtheri, Iohannis Mathesii, D.Martini Miri, vnd Iohannis Gigantis, Jn Frag vnd Antwort (Eisleben: Andreas Petri/ Leipzig: Henning Grosse, 1588) = VD16, W 1584.

Patrizio Foresta

This ‘society is an imitation and representation of the apostolic order’: the Jesuits and their self-understanding from Jerónimo Nadal to the Imago primi saeculi Societatis Jesu (16th–17th century)

Introduction Trying to explain to his brethren what the Society of Jesus was about and which kind of religious community it was, Jerónimo Nadal wrote in his Adnotationes in constitutiones of about 1556 that the ‘Society [of Jesus] is an imitation and representation of the apostolic order’.1 This apostolic self-understanding characterises the entire Jesuit history well into the twentieth century: addressing the 32nd general congregation on 3 December 1974, Pope Paul VI called the Jesuits ‘apostles […], heralds of the Gospel […] men whom Christ himself sends to the whole world to announce and spread his teaching among men of every rank and condition’, although in the pontiff ’s characterisation of the Jesuits as ‘apostles’ their missionary freedom and their obedience as priests were juxtaposed: bound to the successor of Peter through the fourth vow of special obedience with regard to the missions, the Jesuits participated in the ‘double charism of the apostle’, whereby fidelity goes hand in hand with service.2 1 Jerónimo Nadal, P. Hieronymi Nadal commentarii de Instituto Societatis Jesu, edited by Nicolau, Michael (Roma: Institutum Historicum Societatis Iesu, 1962), 124–5: ‘Imitatio quaedam haec [Societas] est apostolici ordinis atque repraesentatio’. On Nadal’s interpretation of the Jesuit vocation see John W. O’Malley, ‘To Travel to Any Part of the World: Jerónimo Nadal and the Jesuit Vocation’, Studies in the Spirituality of Jesuits 16 (1984) 1–20, reprinted in John W. O’Malley, Saints or Devils Incarnate? Studies in Jesuit History (Leiden/ Boston: Brill, 2013), 147–64. 2 Acta Apostolicae Sedis 66 (1974), 711–27, on 716: ‘Vos insuper estis apostoli: Evangelii nempe praecones, qui quoquoversus mittimini pro germana illa indole, quae vestrae Societatis imaginem distinguit: viri igitur quos ipse Christus mittit in mundum universum, ad sanctam suam doctrinam inter cuiusvis ordinis condicionisque homines disseminandam’; available at http://www.vatican.va/archive/aas/documents/AAS-66-1974-ocr.pdf [1. 10. 2018]. An English translation of the address can be found in John W. Padberg (ed.), Documents of the 31st And 32nd General Congregations of the Society of Jesus. An English Translation of the Official Latin Texts of the General Congregations and of the Accompanying Papal Documents (Saint Louis, MO: Institute of Jesuit Sources, 1977), 519–36. See also John W. Padberg, The Society True to Itself. A Brief History of the 32nd General Congregation of the Society of Jesus (December 2,

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This contribution aims to analyse how this apostolic self-understanding of the Society of Jesus arose from Ignatius of Loyola’s fundamental texts, especially from the Spiritual Exercises, and which ideal of ‘apostolic men’ it proposed to fellow Jesuits during the founder’s life and after his death in 1556; at the same time, it will show how this ‘apostolic’ self-understanding affected the further development of the Jesuits, in particular in the Old German Empire, where the confessional clash led to a strong process of identity demarcation, at least in the historical and theological debate.3

The apostolic identity of the Jesuits The apostolicity of the Catholic Church was a widely and lively debated issue in those crucial years of the sixteenth century, especially during the last sessions of the Council of Trent: the ‘insistence on unbroken continuity with the apostles’ that had emerged from the council to justify its confessionally harsh positions towards Protestantism was seen as a ‘response to the Protestant accusation’ that the Catholic Church deviated from the gospel; this led to ‘Trent’s insistence’ on continuity that affected both the Catholic conception of history and change, and which thereupon became ‘a recognizable Catholic trait’ until now, at least in some (very) traditional milieus. This insistence on continuity also affected a then confessionally biased discipline such as Church History that was emerging at that time, as can be seen in the erudite clash between Illyricus’s Centuriae and Baronio’s Annales ecclesiastici, or between Paolo Sarpi’s Istoria del Concilio Tridentino and Pietro Sforza Pallavicino’s Istoria del Concilio di Trento. If the Protestants’ claim was that the history of the Catholic Church was a distortion of the gospel and an evil departure from the true apostolic tradition, the best way to counter what from such an historical and theological point of view was a fundamental criticism could only be the assertion of the Catholic Church’s unbroken continuity with the apostolic era.4 Furthermore, the insistence on continuity has also affected most of the Catholic historians ever since until the paradigmatic shift after Vatican II.5 1974–March 7, 1975), monographic issue of Studies in the Spirituality of Jesuits 3/4 (1983) 18, 23. 3 Patrizio Foresta, ‘Wie ein Apostel Deutschlands’: Apostolat, Obrigkeit und jesuitisches Selbstverständnis am Beispiel des Petrus Canisius (1543–1570) (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2016). 4 John W. O’Malley, Trent. What Happened at the Council (Cambridge, MA/London: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2013), 99, 273–4. 5 John W. O’Malley, What Happened at Vatican II (Cambridge, MA/London: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2008); see also John W. O’Malley, ‘Reform, Historical Consciousness, and Vatican II’s Aggiornamento’ Theological Studies 32 (1971) 573–601.

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On the other hand, the insistence of some Jesuit theologians and historians, and particularly of Jerónimo Nadal, on the apostolic nature of the Society of Jesus had a Christological and pastoral side that must not be overlooked and which complements the whole picture in a more appropriate fashion. Thus, in Nadal’s statement cited at the beginning one can recognise both aspects of the ‘apostolic’ connotation: the continuity from the Pentecost to the present and the activity of announcing the gospel to the world. Ignatius’s key texts are fundamental in order to understand what we might call the ‘the Jesuit charism’ or ‘the Jesuit ideal and spirit’ that found an impressive counterpart in Nadal’s view of the order’s innermost nature: it had its origins in Ignatius’s mystical experiences, was then shared and lived together with the first companions and finally communicated to all the Jesuits through the Spiritual Exercises and the Constitutions, thus changing from a personal mystical intuition into an institution that was meant to be a top-down, structured one throughout. The particular trait of the Society’s decisively apostolic spirituality that the Jesuits inherited from the founder can be shown at its most effective by quoting a famous passage from Nadal’s Commentary on the Examen generale: Ignatius received from God the singular grace and privilege of experiencing and contemplating His presence in all things, actions and conversations; he also had a lively feeling for spiritual reality, being contemplative in action (‘simul in actione contemplativus’) and finding God in all things (‘Deum esse in omnibus rebus inueniendum’), as he used to put it. According to Nadal, this grace and privilege is also granted to the whole Society of Jesus and bound up with the Jesuit’s very vocation.6 Although there are five key documents and basic points of reference to understand fully the early Jesuit vocation, i. e. the Spiritual Exercises, the Formula Instituti, the Constitutions, Ignatius’s Autobiography and his correspondence, according to John O’Malley’s The First Jesuits, the Spiritual Exercises ‘encapsulated the essence of Ignatius’s own spiritual turnaround [… and] remained the document that told Jesuits on the most profound level what they were and what 6 Jerónimo Nadal, Epistolae P. Hieronymi Nadal Societatis Jesu ab anno 1546 ad 1577 nunc primum editae et illustratae a patribus eiusdem Societatis, edited by Cervós, Fridericus (4 vols.; Madrid: Typis Augustini Avrial, 1898–1905), vol. 4 (1905), 651–2, and Nadal, P. Hieronymi Nadal commentarii, 162–3: ‘Hanc rationem orationis concepit Pater Ignatius, magno privilegio, selectissime; tu illud praeterea in omnibus rebus, actionibus, colloquiis, ut Dei praesentiam rerumque spiritualium affectum sentiret atque contemplaretur, simul in actione contemplativus (quod ita solebat explicare: Deum esse in omnibus rebus inueniendum) […] Quod igitur priuilegium Patri Ignatio factum intellegimus, idem toti Societati concessum esse credimus, et gratiam orationis illius et contemplationis in Societate omnibus nobis paratam esse confidimus, eamque cum uocatione nostra coniunctam esse confitemur’. Cf. Herbert Alphonso, ‘The Jesuit/Ignatian Charism. A Personal Synthesis and Tribute to Fr. P. Arrupe’, Review of Ignatian Spirituality 38 (2007) 49–73, on 56–7.

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they were supposed to be. Furthermore, the Exercises set the pattern and goals of all the ministries in which the Society engaged […] There is no understanding the Jesuits without reference to that book’.7 The Exercises should therefore be the starting point to which the origins of the Jesuit apostolic identity can be traced back. On the other hand, while analysing the construction of Jesuit identities we should be aware of the fact that both their ‘collective identity’ and ‘corporate consciousness’ as well as their ‘dynamic cluster of identities’ were ‘continually in the process of renegotiation and recreation at the hands both of outsiders and of the fathers themselves’.8 If it is true that, according to Nadal, a ‘companion of Christ’ was supposed to imitate and represent the apostolic order either in the overseas missions or in the midst of the confessional struggle in Europe, then being a Jesuit in the early modern world and acting as a member of the Society of Jesus could not mean the same everywhere. This led Ignatius’s heirs to undergo a process of ‘renegotiation and recreation’ in different contexts as well as to develop ‘different opinions among the Jesuits themselves as to the Society’s missionary and apostolic vocation’.9 The Jesuit enterprise was thus possible only thanks to its ‘interactive character’ that necessarily implied a ‘negotiation on all levels’ within early modern society.10 The Spiritual Exercises recall vividly the divine mission with which Christ entrusted the apostles in a crucial passage, the meditation on the two banners during the fourth day of the second week: the exercitant should imagine Lucifer, sitting in the great field of Babylon. He then summons and scatters innumerable demons through all the world to tempt men with a longing for riches, honour, pride and every sort of vice. On the contrary, the exercitant has to imagine the supreme and true captain, Christ the Lord, who chooses apostles and the disciples, and ‘sends them through all the world’ to spread ‘his sacred doctrine through all states and conditions of persons’.11 7 John W. O’Malley, The First Jesuits (Cambridge, MA/London: Harvard University Press, 1993), 4. 8 Simon Ditchfield, ‘Of Missions and Models: The Jesuit Enterprise (1540–1773). Reassessed in Recent Literature’, The Catholic Historical Review 43 (2007) 325–43, on respectively 327, 330, 337. 9 Aliocha Maldavsky, ‘The Problematic Acquisition of Indigenous Languages: Practices and Contentions in Missionary Specialization in the Jesuit Province of Peru (1568–1640)’, in O’Malley, John W./Bailey, Gauvin A./Harris, Steven J. et al. (ed.), The Jesuits II. Cultures, Sciences and the Arts 1540–1773 (Toronto/Buffalo/London, University of Toronto Press, 2006) 602–15, on 610–11. 10 John W. O’Malley, ‘The Historiography of the Society of Jesus: Where Does It Stand Today?’, in O’Malley/Bailey/Harris et al. (ed.), The Jesuits II, 3–37, on 25–6. 11 Ignatius of Loyola, Sancti Ignatii de Loyola Constitutiones Societatis Jesu. Tomus primus. Monumenta Constitutionum praevia, edited by Codina, Arturo (Roma, 1934), 247: ‘Secundum autem est, speculari, quo pacto ipse mundi Dominus […] universi electos apostolos,

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Bearing in mind his eschatological clash between Christ and Lucifer, who are battling over men’s salvation or perdition, it must be observed that, while speaking about the Society of Jesus as an order imitating and representing the apostolic way of living, Nadal is not solely referring to a vague pastoral connotation, as we may understand it nowadays, or using it as a circumlocution for some kind of ministry or pastoral care, but he is rather pointing to the order’s apostolic nature and hence stressing that the Jesuits were recovering a fundamental aspect of the Primitive Church, which, in Nadal’s view, should be the leading spirit behind the peculiar ministries of the Society. One can hardly fail to notice that this call for apostolicity, including a ‘life-style modeled on the way the early disciples or apostles were supposed to have lived’,12 was also related to a crucial moment in the history of Christianity, namely the Pentecost, in which the missionary aspect was equally as important as the faithfulness to the true message of the gospels. In the Society’s very name Nadal found the quintessence of the Jesuit vocation, for being a member of the Societas, viz. ‘Company’ meant being ‘companions of Christ’ (‘Socii igitur sumus Christi Jesu’), God himself having benignly and gracefully inspired the name of the Society to Ignatius.13 In commenting on the meditation on the two banners, he saw the fundament of the Society’s apostolic nature in ‘fighting under the banner of Christ’s army’, to which the Jesuits are called by virtue of their name.14 It is not therefore surprising that imitating and representing the apostolic way of life in the present, which constitutes the apostolic identity of the Jesuits, could also assume a strongly anti-Protestant contour, for being a ‘companion of Christ’ also called for readiness to fight against those who were believed to be the enemies of Christ. Looking back with hindsight, this was neither the most obvious option nor a obligatory one, even if it seemed unavoidable to the Jesuits

discipulos ac ministros alios per orbem mittat, qui omni hominum generi, statui et conditioni doctrinam sacram ac salutiferam impartiant’. 12 John W. O’Malley, ‘Priesthood, Ministry, and Religious Life: Some Historical and Historiographical Considerations’, Theological Studies 49 (1988) 223–57, on 234. 13 Nadal, Epistolae P. Hieronymi Nadal, vol. 4, 650: ‘Quibus ex rebus satis aperte possunus intelligere ex divina inspiratione fuisse a Deo illud nomen Societati impositum. Socii igitur sumus X.i [Christi] Jesu ex illustri quidam atque esimia in nos benignitate ac gratia’. Nadal also adds in ibid., 649: ‘Ita et hoc nomen authoritatem accepit [Societas] ab apostolica sede, principium tamen a Dei ipsius inspiratione’. Cf. O’Malley, The First Jesuits, 69. 14 Nadal, Epistolae P. Hieronymi Nadal, vol. 4, 649: ‘Nam ratio nostrae vocationis militia quaedam est sub uexillo Christi, quod ex totis exercitiis colligimus, et in meditatione praesertim Regis temporalis ac Uexillorum sentimus; nam in meditatione Regis temporalis uocamur a Christo Jesu summo et angelorum et hominum, et rege et duce ad societatem sui belli […]. Nomina nos damus atque conscribimus digito Dei in illam militiam sacrosantam. […] Hac ratione primum vocatus est P. Ignatius; hac per illas meditationes nos vocat Christus in Societatem suae militiae’.

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themselves that they should take part in the confessional struggle in as many ways as possible. One beloved means was constructing the order’s identity and history through hagiographical erudition. For instance, the authors of the Imago primi saeculi Societatis Jesu, a magnificent and extremely self-indulging volume about the history of the Society of Jesus published in 1640 in Antwerpen to celebrate the centenary of the order, interpreted the apostolic work of Francis Xavier in the overseas missions from an outspoken, apologetical point of view and attributed the successful enterprise of having confined Protestantism within the European boundaries to the pious engagement of Xavier and his fellow Jesuits in the previous century. While Luther could not spread his heresy outside Central and Northern Europe, the Society of Jesus not only helped most Catholics on the Old Continent preserve their true faith, but also announced the salvific message in the newly discovered lands in South America and in the ancient realms of East Asia.15 The accomplishment of having reached so quickly so many peoples outside Europe was a divine sign that could only confirm the Society’s magnitude. Moreover, Ignaz Agricola, who also wrote a celebratory work, the History of the Jesuit Province of Upper Germany, wished that his brethren might at least try, helped by Francis Xavier’s inspiration, to gain as many souls in Upper Germany among Catholics and misbelievers as Xavier did among Indians and Japanese in just one decade of apostolic work.16 This way of interpreting the history of Christian missions under such an apologetical paradigm became all the more evident from the middle of the 15 Imago primi saeculi Societatis Jesu a provincia Flandro-Belgica eiusdem Societatis repraesentata (Antwerpen, 1640), 19–20: ‘Non nisi partem Europae Lutheri dementia attigit: totam omnino instituita ab Ignatio Societas Iesu pervasit. Illa nec Alpes nec Pyrenaeos montes superare unquam potuit: haec prima a nostris hominibus occupata praesidia sunt, quasi vitalis corporis et precipuae partes. Itaque per Italiam, per Hispaniam, omnem ac Lusitaniam, primo statim ortu, tamquam subita quaedam lux Socij diffusi: quo Lutheri secta numquam penetravit. Ad Septentrionem haeresis dominari se posse credidit: at illam ubique Societas persequi, confirmare Catholicos, excitare languentes, vacillantes manu tenere, lapsos erigere, haereticis esse terrori, voce scriptisque convincere: ut teterrimos hostes Iesuitas (sic appellabant) suis maxime coeptis officere palam indignarentur’; ibid., 20–1: ‘Utcumque sua magnifice extollant Lutherani, non excelsere Europam […] Societas vix nata, Europae finibus egressa, in Americam, Asiam, Africam primo fere atque eodem tempore penetravit […] Unius Xaverij industria haereticorum omnium conatibus opponi potest. Plus virum hunc pro Christiana republica egisse, quam Lutheri acclesas omnes’. On the Imago primi saeculi see John W. O’Malley (ed.), Art, Controversy, and the Jesuits. The Imago Primi Saeculi (1640) (Philadelphia: Saint Joseph’s University Press, 2015). 16 Ignaz Agricola, Historia provinciae Societatis Jesu Germaniae superioris, quinque primas annorum complexa decades (Augsburg, 1727), iv: ‘Huius provinciae operarii xaveriano inflammati spiritu pluribus saltem decenniis tanta animorum lucra fructusque inter Orthodoxos et haereticos exaequare connitantur in Germania superiore, quanta magnus ille Apostolus una dumtaxat annorum decade inter Indos et Japones congregavit’.

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seventeenth century. It is not by chance that the Imago primi saeculi was conceived and composed during the Thirty Years’ War, as was the case of another grand reconstruction of Jesuit history, the Societas Jesu usque ad sanguinis et vitae profusionem militans (Society of Jesus fighting up to the profusion of its blood and life) by Mathias Tanner (1630–92), which appeared in Prague in 1675. His argumentation is in its own terms quite simple and confirms once more the close interdependence between the two parts of what we might call the doubleentry bookkeeping of losing and earning souls: nobody more than the misbelievers, who hate Germany most, experienced how many efforts and attempts the Society of Jesus made to bring Germany back into the Church’s unity; even if the overseas territories that had been converted to the true faith are much larger than Germany, having held back the heretical overflow of the Protestants, resemble nevertheless a wonder.17

Conclusions: between Peter and Paul The history of the Jesuits offers many examples from its ranks of how the interplay of missionary zeal and a confessionally shaped self-understanding led to a new perception of apostolate and apostolicity in early modern Christianity. Ronnie Po-chia Hsia interpreted this apologetical view of contemporary Church history in terms of a confessional binomial he described as the ‘loss of souls/ earning of souls’ paradigm: the more the Catholic Church lost souls in Europe after the establishment of the Reformation, the greater was the zeal and the urge to earn souls in other lands and continents; the successes obtained in the overseas missions and the difficulties in the Old World, respectively seen as signs of God’s favour and wrath, served as a means of consolation for the supporters of the old faith and, on the other hand, strengthened the confessional front against Protestants all over Europe.18 Beside that, this ‘loss of souls/earning of souls’ paradigm was being shaped during an era in the history of Christianity in which ‘geographical Catholicity’ 17 Mathias Tanner, Societas Jesu usque ad sanguinis et vitae profusionem militans (Praha, 1675), 41: ‘Quot in Germania subierit Societas labores, quot adhibuerit Operas, ut eam unitati Ecclesiae restitueret, nullus magis, quam ipsi experiuntur Heterodoxi, cane pejus et angue illam idcirco exosi. Et licet non eo, quo Jndici illius apud Ethnicos et barbaros coronentur labores successu, ubi pauculae eius Operae Regna et Provincias, Germania vastiores Christo lucratae sunt, magni tamen instar prodigji habendum est, potuisse illius objectu Haeresis torrentem omnia late inundantem, vel sisti’. 18 R. Po-chia Hsia, ‘Mission und Konfessionalisierung in Übersee’, in Reinhard, Wolfgang/ Schilling, Heinz (ed.), Die Katholische Konfessionalisierung. Wissenschaftliches Symposion der Gesellschaft zur Herausgabe des Corpus Catholicorum und des Vereins für Reformationsgeschichte 1993 (Münster: Aschendorff, 1995) 158–65, on 158.

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and its worldwide extension increasingly turned into ‘a moment of self-consciousness and self-understanding’ as well as into an important anti-Protestant argument in the face of a different way of living the Christian faith during the early modern era.19 While Protestantism did not really succeed in settling outside Northern and Central Europe, at least in the sixteenth century, the worldwide presence of the Catholic Church, promoted by the late medieval and early modern religious orders, seemed perfect to confirm its superiority towards the other European confessions, thereby binding together, on the one hand, the centralism of the papal curia and, on the other, the universalism of Catholicism. This also applied to the Society of Jesus, whose foundation apparently coincided with the promotion of the overseas missions and the establishing of the Reformation in Europe, and which in the eyes of many seemed to have received the assignment from God to spread and defend the true faith. One can hereby recognise both dimensions of the apostolicity outlined at the beginning of this contribution: the worldwide missionary activity and the preservation of the correct doctrine in accordance with the rightful successors of the apostles Peter and Paul. Again, Nadal provides us with a very concise and effective formulation: ‘Peter shows us the firmness and direction, Paul the ministry in our Society; both princes of the Church help us’;20 the Jesuits’ vocation thus resembles that of the apostles: ‘We – as Nadal wrote – first meet the Society and then follow it; we are instructed and obtain the faculty to be sent on a mission; we are sent and practice our ministry; we are prepared to die for Christ while we are fulfilling our ministry duties’.21 Given that during the thirteenth century the cardinals had also been seen as the apostles’ successors in particular alongside the bishops, thus dividing the apostolic succession in two by ‘acknowledging the College of Cardinals’ special ecclesial position’,22 the Jesuit apostolic self-understanding could have led to some institutional embarrassment and confusion. For instance, Jan Nádasi, who in the mid-seventeenth century continued and finished two impressive works on 19 Gottfried Maron, Ignatius von Loyola. Mystik – Theologie – Kirche (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2001), 156. 20 Jerónimo Nadal, P. Hieronymi Nadal orationis observationes, edited by Nicolau, Michael (Roma: Institutum Historicum Societatis Iesu, 1964), 151: ‘Petrus firmitatem et directionem, Paulus nobis ministerium in Societate nostra significat; et adiuvat uterque ut Ecclesiae Princeps’. 21 Nadal, P. Hieronymi Nadal orationis observationes, 138: ‘Vocationi et institutioni Apostolorum, nostra vocatio similis; cognoscimus primum Societatem; deinde sequimur; 3º, docemur; 4º, accipimus facultatem ut mittamur; 5º, mittimur; 6º, sumus in ministerio; 7º, pro Christo mori parati in obeundis ministeriis’. 22 Giuseppe Alberigo, Cardinalato e collegialità. Studi sull’ecclesiologia tra l’XI e il XIV secolo (Firenze: Vallecchi, 1969), 92: ‘Unde sicut cardinales specialiter, sicut episcopi generaliter vicem tenent apostolorum’; 96: ‘il riconoscimento della speciale posizione ecclesiale del collegio cardinalizio’.

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the ‘lustrous deaths’ and the ‘heroes and victims’ from the Society of Jesus originally begun by his fellow Jesuit Philippe Alegambe,23 wrote in his dedication to powerful Cardinal Juan de Lugo, former professor at the Gregoriana and a Jesuit himself, that he was offering him some ‘purple effigies’ hinting at both the cardinal’s vestments and the Jesuits’ willingness to die as martyrs and shed their blood for the sake of the Catholic faith.24 In a thoroughly different fashion, Nadal had tried to answer the question of who the Jesuits were and what they were like by affirming that the Jesuits were neither monks, nor pastors of parishes or bishops, even if they surely had something very important in common with them, namely the ministry of the word and the administration of the sacraments.25 Hereby, the traditional ecclesiological element is at first glance missing, but Nadal in particular, and the Jesuits in general, undoubtedly saw themselves within the hierarchical frame of the Catholic Church, although from the slightly dissimilar prospective of the new regular clergy that had emerged in the course of the sixteenth century. While stating that the Jesuits imitate and represent the apostolic way of life, Nadal and his fellow Jesuits were understanding and using ‘imitate’ and ‘represent’ in a polysemic, that is theological, spiritual and even institutional sense, as was often the case in the long history of repraesentatio.26 About four hundred years later, Pope Paul VI’s prospective on the Society of Jesus in the post-Conciliar Church was, at least apparently, quite similar to Nadal’s, as well as to the Jesuits’ own contemporary self-understanding, expressed in a lively manner in the second decree (‘Jesuits Today’) of the 32nd General Congregation: ‘A Jesuit, therefore, is essentially a man on a mission: a 23 Philippe Alegambe, Mortes illustres et gesta eorum de Societate Jesu, qui in odium fidei, pietatis, aut cuiuscunque virtutis, occasione missionum, Sacramentorum administratorum, fidei, aut virtutis propugnatae; ab Ethnicis, Haereticis, vel aliis, veneno, igne, ferro, aut morte alia necati, aerumnisue confecti sunt (Roma, 1657); Philippe Alegambe, Heroes et victimae charitatis Societatis Jesu, seu catalogus eorum qui e Societate Iesu charitati animam devoverunt; ad id expositi, et immortui peste infectorum obsequio ex charitate, obedientiaque suscepto (Roma, 1658). 24 Alegambe, Mortes illustres, from the dedication, without page number: ‘E minima Societate Jesu purpureas virtutum effigies […] Pictum sanguine orbem terrae […] sanguinis vox […] Voce clamantis sui sanguinis […] Sudor et sanguis […] Argumentum quoque libri ad Te spectat, quippe purpureum’. 25 Nadal, P. Hieronymi Nadal commentarii, 124: ‘Qua religione, non solum omnia religionum instituta complecteretur, sed ea quoque quae episcoporum sunt atque sacerdotum coniungeret; illis duntaxat sepositis quae vel humilitatem impedire possent vel paupertatem vel ea ministerial et operas quae ad salutem et perfectionem proximi procurandam confferri debent ex instituto’. 26 Hasso Hofmann, Repräsentation. Studien zur Wort- und Begriffsgeschichte von der Antike bis ins 19. Jahrhundert (Berlin: Duncker und Humblot, 42003); Massimo Faggioli/Alberto Melloni (ed.), Repraesentatio. Mapping a Keyword for Churches and Governance. Proceedings of San Miniato International Workshop, October 13–16 2004 (Münster: Lit Verlag, 2006).

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mission that he receives immediately from the Holy Father or from his own religious superiors, but ultimately from Christ himself, the one sent by the Father. It is by being sent that the Jesuit becomes a companion of Jesus’.27 This seems to confirm that Ignatius’s intuition of a new religious order of men grounded in the fourth vow of missionary obedience, mobile as to its apostolate and at the same time steady as to its institutional bond to the Roman Pontiff, can still be seen as the ‘beginning and principal foundation of the Society of Jesus’ and helps explain why, and how, this apostolic understanding, in all its nuances and complexity, survived throughout the order’s troubled history.28

Bibliography Acta Apostolicae Sedis 66 (1974) 711–27, available at http://www.vatican.va/archive/aas/ documents/AAS-66-1974-ocr.pdf [1. 10. 2018]. Agricola, Ignaz, Historia provinciae Societatis Jesu Germaniae superioris, quinque primas annorum complexa decades (Augsburg, 1727). Alberigo, Giuseppe, Cardinalato e collegialità. Studi sull’ecclesiologia tra l’XI e il XIV secolo (Firenze: Vallecchi, 1969). Alegambe, Philippe, Mortes illustres et gesta eorum de Societate Jesu, qui in odium fidei, pietatis, aut cuiuscunque virtutis, occasione missionum, Sacramentorum administratorum, fidei, aut virtutis propugnatae; ab Ethnicis, Haereticis, vel aliis, veneno, igne, ferro, aut morte alia necati, aerumnisue confecti sunt (Roma, 1657). Alegambe, Philippe, Heroes et victimae charitatis Societatis Jesu, seu catalogus eorum qui e Societate Iesu charitati animam devoverunt; ad id expositi, et immortui peste infectorum obsequio ex charitate, obedientiaque suscepto (Roma, 1658). Alphonso, Herbert, ‘The Jesuit/Ignatian Charism. A Personal Synthesis and Tribute to Fr. P. Arrupe’, Review of Ignatian Spirituality 38 (2007) 49–73. Ditchfield, Simon, ‘Of Missions and Models: The Jesuit Enterprise (1540–1773). Reassessed in Recent Literature’, The Catholic Historical Review 43 (2007) 325–43.

27 GC 32, d. 2, n. 14, quoted in O’Malley, ‘To Travel to Any Part of the World’, 16, and O’ Malley, Saints or Devils Incarnate, 164. See also Padberg, The Society True to Itself, 76–7. 28 Ignatius of Loyola, Sancti Ignatii de Loyola exercitia spiritualia. Textuum antiquissimorum nova editio, edited by Calveras, Jose/Dalmases, Candido de (Roma: Institutum Historicum Societatis Iesu, 1969): ‘Seiendo la tal promesa [de obedeçer y de ir donde quiera que el sumo vicario de Christo nuestro Señor] nuestro principio y principal fundamento’. On this topic see also Burkhart Schneider, ‘Nuestro principio y principal fundamento. Zum historischen Verständnis des Papstgehorsamsgelu¨ bdes’, AHSJ 25 (1956) 488–513; Johannes G. Gerhartz, ‘Insuper promitto…’. Die feierlichen Sondergelu¨bde katholischer Orden (Roma: Pontificia Università Gregoriana, 1966); Johannes G. Gerhartz, ‘Vom “Geist des Ursprungs” der Gesellschaft Jesu’, Geist und Leben 41 (1968) 245–65; Bertrand de Margerie, ‘El cuarto voto de la Compañia de Jesus, según Nadal’, Manresa 42 (1970) 359–76; O’Malley, ‘To Travel to Any Part of the World’, 9–10; O’Malley, The First Jesuits, 299.

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Faggioli, Massimo/Melloni, Alberto (ed.), Repraesentatio. Mapping a Keyword for Churches and Governance. Proceedings of San Miniato International Workshop, October 13–16 2004 (Münster: Lit Verlag, 2006). Foresta, Patrizio, ‘Wie ein Apostel Deutschlands’: Apostolat, Obrigkeit und jesuitisches Selbstverständnis am Beispiel des Petrus Canisius (1543–1570) (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2016). Gerhartz, Johannes G., ‘Insuper promitto…’. Die feierlichen Sondergelu¨bde katholischer Orden (Roma: Pontificia Università Gregoriana, 1966). Gerhartz, Johannes G., ‘Vom “Geist des Ursprungs” der Gesellschaft Jesu’, Geist und Leben 41 (1968) 245–65. Hofmann, Hasso, Repräsentation. Studien zur Wort- und Begriffsgeschichte von der Antike bis ins 19. Jahrhundert (Berlin: Duncker und Humblot, 42003). Hsia, R. Po-chia, ‘Mission und Konfessionalisierung in Übersee’, in Reinhard, Wolfgang/ Schilling, Heinz (ed.), Die Katholische Konfessionalisierung. Wissenschaftliches Symposion der Gesellschaft zur Herausgabe des Corpus Catholicorum und des Vereins für Reformationsgeschichte 1993 (Münster: Aschendorff, 1995) 158–65. Imago primi saeculi Societatis Jesu a provincia Flandro-Belgica eiusdem Societatis repraesentata (Antwerpen, 1640). Maldavsky, Aliocha, ‘The Problematic Acquisition of Indigenous Languages: Practices and Contentions in Missionary Specialization in the Jesuit Province of Peru (1568–1640)’, in O’Malley, John W./Bailey, Gauvin A./Harris, Steven J. et al. (ed.), The Jesuits II. Cultures, Sciences and the Arts 1540–1773 (Toronto/Buffalo/London, University of Toronto Press, 2006) 602–15. Margerie, Bertrand de, ‘El cuarto voto de la Compañia de Jesus, según Nadal’, Manresa 42 (1970) 359–76. Maron, Gottfried, Ignatius von Loyola. Mystik – Theologie – Kirche (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2001). Nadal, Jerónimo, Epistolae P. Hieronymi Nadal Societatis Jesu ab anno 1546 ad 1577 nunc primum editae et illustratae a patribus eiusdem Societatis, edited by Cervós, Fridericus (4 vols.; Madrid: Typis Augustini Avrial, 1898–1905). Nadal, Jerónimo, P. Hieronymi Nadal commentarii de Instituto Societatis Jesu, edited by Nicolau, Michael (Roma: Institutum Historicum Societatis Iesu, 1962). Nadal, Jerónimo, P. Hieronymi Nadal orationis observationes, edited by Nicolau, Michael (Roma: Institutum Historicum Societatis Iesu, 1964). O’Malley, John W., ‘Reform, Historical Consciousness, and Vatican II’s Aggiornamento’ Theological Studies 32 (1971) 573–601. O’Malley, John W., ‘To Travel to Any Part of the World: Jerónimo Nadal and the Jesuit Vocation’, Studies in the Spirituality of Jesuits 16 (1984) 1–20, reprinted in O’Malley, John W., Saints or Devils Incarnate? Studies in Jesuit History (Leiden/Boston: Brill, 2013) 147–64. O’Malley, John W., ‘Priesthood, Ministry, and Religious Life: Some Historical and Historiographical Considerations’, Theological Studies 49 (1988) 223–57. O’Malley, John W., The First Jesuits (Cambridge, MA/London: Harvard University Press, 1993). O’Malley, John W., ‘The Historiography of the Society of Jesus: Where Does It Stand Today?’, in O’Malley, John W./Bailey, Gauvin A./Harris, Steven J. et al. (ed.), The Jesuits

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II. Cultures, Sciences and the Arts 1540–1773 (Toronto/Buffalo/London, University of Toronto Press, 2006) 3–37. O’Malley, John W., What Happened at Vatican II (Cambridge, MA/London: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2008). O’Malley, John W., Trent. What Happened at the Council (Cambridge, MA/London: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2013). O’Malley, John W. (ed.), Art, Controversy, and the Jesuits. The Imago Primi Saeculi (1640) (Philadelphia: Saint Joseph’s University Press, 2015). Padberg, John W. (ed.), Documents of the 31st And 32nd General Congregations of the Society of Jesus. An English Translation of the Official Latin Texts of the General Congregations and of the Accompanying Papal Documents (Saint Louis, MO: Institute of Jesuit Sources, 1977). Padberg, John W., The Society True to Itself. A Brief History of the 32nd General Congregation of the Society of Jesus (December 2, 1974–March 7, 1975), monographic issue of Studies in the Spirituality of Jesuits 3/4 (1983). Ignatius of Loyola, Sancti Ignatii de Loyola Constitutiones Societatis Jesu. Tomus primus. Monumenta Constitutionum praevia, edited by Codina, Arturo (Roma, 1934). Ignatius of Loyola, Sancti Ignatii de Loyola exercitia spiritualia. Textuum antiquissimorum nova editio, edited by Calveras, Jose/Dalmases, Candido de (Roma: Institutum Historicum Societatis Iesu, 1969). Schneider, Burkhart, ‘Nuestro principio y principal fundamento. Zum historischen Verständnis des Papstgehorsamsgelu¨ bdes’, AHSJ 25 (1956) 488–513 Tanner, Mathias, Societas Jesu usque ad sanguinis et vitae profusionem militans (Praha, 1675).

Volkmar Ortmann

Reformation and nation: Karl Hase and Ferdinand Christian Baur on the Reformation as a typically German affair

Reformation and nation: a problematic relationship The connection between religion, namely Protestantism, and nation in Germany has been the focus of political and historical research in recent decades.1 Unfortunately, church historians appear not to have been very involved in this debate yet, though the forthcoming jubilee of the posting of Luther’s ninety-five theses raises not only the question as to whether this should be celebrated as an ecumenical or as a Protestant event, but also as to whether the Reformation should be regarded as a European or as a purely German event. The latter perception of the Reformation is apparently still widespread and is the object of criticism, not only outside Germany.2 Heinz Schilling, for instance, has called the development of the national understanding of the Protestant Reformation a German founding myth comparable to the French Revolution or to similar events in other countries and nations.3 He points out that in the sixteenth century the Reformation and the German nation were not intertwined to the extent that they had become by the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, and he asserts: ‘In the

1 Cf. for example Heinz-Gerhard Haupt/Dieter Langewiesche (ed.), Nation und Religion in der deutschen Geschichte (Frankfurt a.M./New York: Campus, 2001); Wolfgang E.J. Weber, ‘Protestantismus, Historismus, Borussianismus. Voraussetzungen und Dimensionen der Geschichtswissenschaft und des Geschichtsbildes im Deutschland des 19. Jahrhunderts’, in Tanner, Klaus (ed.), Konstruktion von Geschichte. Jubelrede, Predigt, protestantische Historiographie (Leipzig: Evangelische Verlagsanstalt, 2012) 307–19; Horst Zillessen (ed.), Volk, Nation, Vaterland. Der deutsche Protestantismus und der Nationalismus (Gütersloh: Gütersloher Verlagshaus Gerd Mohn, 1970). 2 Cf. for example Emidio Campi, ‘Was the Reformation a German Event?’, in Opitz, Peter (ed.), The Myth of the Reformation (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2013) 9–31, on 21–3; Günter Frank/Emidio Campi/Volker Leppin et al. (ed.), Wem gehört die Reformation? Nationale und konfessionelle Dispositionen der Reformationsdeutung (Freiburg: Herder, 2013), 7–8. 3 See Heinz Schilling, ‘Comment to Thomas A. Brady’, in Brady, Thomas A., The Protestant Reformation in German History (Washington, DC: German Historical Institute, 1998) 35–47, on 47.

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beginning there was Ranke’.4 As Schilling argues, Leopold von Ranke’s perspective of the Reformation ‘became dogma’5 beginning with his Deutsche Geschichte im Zeitalter der Reformation (1839–47), and even ‘in European historiography generally’.6 There can be no doubt that Ranke’s influence was important for making the ‘Reformation’, with its close connection to the historical events in Germany, a term describing a period of history in general, but what he made popular and established as ‘axiomatic’7 had already begun in the eighteenth century. It must also be underlined that similar tendencies can be found in German church historiography. The influence of scholars like Ferdinand Christian Baur and especially Karl Hase should not be understated. Therefore, I should like to provide an outline of how they understood the relationship between the Protestant Reformation and the German nation.

Karl Hase and Ferdinand Christian Baur: some biographical observations Karl Hase and Ferdinand Christian Baur were of nearly the same age: Baur was born in 1792, Hase in 1800. They both also had a very formative influence upon nineteenth-century theology, especially for church history, but each one in his very unique way. Hase spent nearly all his life as a professor in Jena, and wrote a compendium of church history, which was published twelve times between 1834 and 1900. He was influenced by Kant, Herder and Schelling, but assimilated their thoughts in a very autonomous way.8 Furthermore, he can be characterised as a liberal theologian who worked on bringing theology and culture closer to each another, so that he can be called a representative of Romanticism in Germany. In his church history, for example, he attributed great importance to art, visiting Rome several times.9 Nevertheless, he took part in the confessional polemics of the first half of the nineteenth century and published a compendium of Protestant polemics against

4 5 6 7 8

Ibid., 35. Ibid., 44. Ibid. Ibid. For Hase’s biography see Magdalena Herbst, Karl von Hase als Kirchenhistoriker (Tübingen: Mohr-Siebeck, 2012), 15–69. See also Bernd Jaeger, Karl von Hase als Dogmatiker (Gütersloh: Gütersloher Verlagshaus Gerd Mohn, 1990), 13–43. 9 See for example Richard Bürkner, Karl von Hase, ein deutscher Professor (Leipzig: Breitkopf & Härtel, 1900), 135–9.

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Roman Catholicism written in a very moderate tone – moderate in the context of its time.10 Hase was not only liberal in his theological thinking; he also can be described as liberal in a political sense and was involved in the political activities of his time: as a student, he participated actively in a student fraternity in Leipzig, and because of this activity, which was illegal at the time, he had to flee Leipzig and was sentenced in Tübingen to one year of imprisonment in the Hohenasperg fortress. In 1848 he was one of the delegates at the assembly that convened in the Paulskirche in Frankfurt. Hase was thus familiar with the writings of the spokesmen for an emerging stronger national consciousness in Germany and he supported the so-called Großdeutsche Lösung – Prussia and Austria united with the other German territories to form one state and empire.11 Ferdinand Christian Baur was professor at the University of Tübingen from 1826 and can also be called a liberal – perhaps less theologically than in the political sense.12 In spite of this, he was not politically active, yet remained nevertheless highly interested, observing and commenting on the political developments of his time precisely and acutely. Baur, too, favoured the national unification of Germany, but unlike Hase he limited his involvement and publications to the sphere of scholarship: philosophy, theology and church history. Therefore, even his dispute with Johann Adam Möhler (1796–1838) about the fundamental difference between Protestantism and Roman Catholicism was

10 Cf. for example Karl Hase, Gesammelte Werke (12 vols.; Leipzig: Breitkopf & Härtel, 1890–3), vol. 9 Handbuch der protestantische Polemik gegen die römisch-katholische Kirche (1890), XXIXf: ‘Ich habe diese Polemik nicht geschrieben wie ein Advocat, der die Sache des Gegners nur niederwerfen will, sondern als ein Theolog, der überall gern anerkennt, was von Christus kommt, oder zu ihm führt’. Hase’s Handbuch was first published in 1862. 11 Cf. for example Karl Hase, Die Republik des deutschen Volkes. Eine Stimme aus Sachsen von Karl von Steinbach (Leipzig: Breitkopf & Härtel, 1848) = Hase, Gesammelte Werke, vol. 12 Vaterländische Reden und Denkschriften von Karl von Hase (1891) 361–399, on 381f; Herbst, Karl von Hase, 20–5. 12 Cf. Christian Andrae, ‘Die Vergegenwärtigung des Zeitgeschehens in F.C. Baurs Tübinger Predigten’, in Köpf, Ulrich (ed.), Historisch-kritische Geschichtsbetrachtung: Ferdinand Christian Baur und seine Schüler. 8. Blaubeurer Symposion (Sigmaringen: Thorbecke, 1994) 83–107, on 84–9, 97f, 100f; Ferdinand C. Baur, Kirchengeschichte des neunzehnten Jahrhunderts, edited by Zeller, Eduard (Tübingen: Fues, 1862), 503–17; Carl E. Hester, ‘Baurs Anfänge in Blaubeuren’, in Köpf, Ulrich (ed.), Historisch-kritische Geschichtsbetrachtung: Ferdinand Christian Baur und seine Schüler. 8. Blaubeurer Symposion (Sigmaringen: Thorbecke, 1994) 67–82, on 70–2. For Baur’s biography cf. Peter C. Hodgson, The Formation of Historical Theology. A Study of Ferdinand Christian Baur (New York: Harper & Row, 1966), 8–36; Friedrich W. Graf, ‘Ferdinand Christian Baur (1792–1860)’, in Fries, Heinrich/ Kretzschmar, Georg (ed.), Klassiker der Theologie (2 vols.; München: Beck, 1983) vol. 2, 89– 110, on 89–99; Klaus Scholder, ‘Baur, Ferdinand Christian’, in Theologische Realenzyklopädie, edited by Müller, Gerhard (36 vols.; Berlin: De Gruyter, 1976–2004) vol. 5 (1980), 352–9, on 352–7.

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more an academic and theological debate than a confessional polemic, which it nevertheless was, as well.13 Just like Hase, Baur was influenced by Kant and especially by Schelling; later on – from the mid-1830s – Hegel’s philosophy became formative.14 Moreover, Baur himself began to exert a formative influence as the founder of the so-called Neue Tübinger Schule. Baur was a convinced advocate of the notion that the ‘idea’ or the ‘spirit’ – God himself – could become a reality in the progress of history and that each step of historical development was based on the progress of men’s notion of God’s effectuality beyond all contingent historical events.15 Accordingly, Baur on the one hand denied the importance of such aspects as biographical details or nationality for history (i. e. church history); on the other hand, he could name individuals like Martin Luther as being very relevant for historical development, not per se, but as prominent examples of being instruments of the spirit, supporting its struggle with their contingent qualities.16 At the 13 Cf. Notger Slenczka, ‘Die Einheit der Kirche und die Wahrheit der Reformation. Theologiegeschichtliche Erinnerungen an die Kontroverse zwischen J.A. Möhler und F.C. Baur angesichts der aktuellen Situation der Ökumene’, Kerygma und Dogma 48 (2002) 172–96, on 179– 82; on 180: ‘Möhler wie Baur sind geleitet von der Annahme, daß nicht den einzelnen Differenzen ein Grundkonsens zugrunde liegt, der zu entdecken ist, sondern daß die einzelnen Differenzen überhaupt nur verständlich werden, wenn man den zugrundeliegenden prinzipiellen Gegensatz erfaßt’. Cf. also Notger Slenczka, ‘Ethical Judgment and Ecclesiastical SelfUnderstanding: Ferdinand Christian Baur’s Interpretation of the Protestant Principle in the Controversy with Johann Adam Möhler’, in Bauspieß, Martin/Landmesser, Christof/Lincicum, David (ed.), Ferdinand Christian Baur and the History of Early Christianity (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2017) 45–66, on 48–50, 56, 63–5; Tobias Kirchhof, Kirche als Einheit. Zur Darstellung des Frühkatholizismus bei Johann Adam Möhler (1796–1838) und Ferdinand Christian Baur (1792–1860) (Leipzig/Berlin: Edition Kirchhof & Francke, 2013), 555f. 14 Cf. Ferdinand C. Baur, Die frühen Briefe (1814–35), edited by Hester, Carl E. (Sigmaringen: Thorbecke, 1993), 113; Kirchhof, Kirche als Einheit, 176f, 180–5; Ulrich Köpf, ‘Baur, Ferdinand Christian’, in Religion in Geschichte und Gegenwart, edited by Betz, Hans D. (8 vols.; Tu¨ bingen: Mohr Siebeck, 41998–2007) vol. 1 (1998), 1183–5, on 1183; Johannes Zachhuber, ‘Ferdinand Christian Baurs Schellingrezeption. Einige Gedanken zu den geschichtsphilosophischen Grundlagen der Tübinger Schule’, in Danz, Christian (ed.), Schelling und die historische Theologie des 19. Jahrhunderts (Tübingen: Mohr-Siebeck, 2013) 151–70, on 158, 164–7. 15 See for example Ferdinand C. Baur, Die Epochen der kirchlichen Geschichtschreibung (Tübingen: Fues, 1852), 248f, 250f; 259: ‘Erst von einer höhern Stufe aus kann man die untergeordneten in ihrer wahren Bedeutung begreifen, weil sie jetzt erst als das erscheinen, was sie sind, nicht als die ganze und volle Wahrheit, sondern nur als ein Moment derselben, durch welche die Idee in dem Gange ihrer Entwicklung erst hindurchgehen muß als eine Form des Bewusstseins, die erst ausgelebt sein muß, um von ihr mit dem Bewusstsein scheiden zu können, daß man für eine höhere reif geworden ist’. 16 See Ferdinand C. Baur, Die christliche Lehre von der Dreieinigkeit und Menschwerdung Gottes in ihrer geschichtlichen Entwicklung (3 vols.; Tübingen: Osiander, 1841–3), vol. 1 (1841), XX = Ferdinand C. Baur, Ausgewählte Werke in Einzelausgaben, edited by Scholder, Klaus (6 vols.; Stuttgart/Bad Cannstatt: Frommann, 1963–75), vol. 2 (1963), 299: ‘Wie gleichgültig kann es uns seyn, ob das eine Individuum Athanasius, das andere Arius hießt, Nestorius oder

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end of his academic career, he published a compendium of church history in five volumes based on his lectures, but he died on 2 December 1860 before this work was completed. The last three volumes appeared in print posthumously.

Periodisation of church history from Hase’s and Baur’s respective points of view Hase and Baur were contemporaries and shared important influences of their time, but they had a different approach to history, which led them to different approaches to periodisation. But the main issue at hand is to look at their understanding of the Reformation period: how did Baur and Hase determine the relation between the range of time and the range of space? The image we have of a certain period in history is certainly dependent on what happened at that time, but it also has something to do with where it took place. This leads to the question of how Reformation and nation are assumed to be related to each other.

Karl Hase on Reformation and nation Looking at Hase’s compendium of church history, there are several prominent aspects that seem to be above suspicion, because they are based on facts such as Luther’s posting of the ninety-five theses, the Diet of Augsburg in 1530 or the Peace of Augsburg in 1555. Hase also mentions Zwingli, highlighting his death on the battlefield in 1531 as well as the death of Calvin in 1564 as significant turning points in the Reformation in Switzerland. He even remarks that Zwingli broke away from the Roman Church independently from Luther and earlier than him.17 In addition, Hase gives an overview of the different Reformation movements in Europe, even including countries like Italy and Spain, where the Protestant reformation was in reality not successful. At that point, one might have the impression of a broad and comprehensive perspective, of an understanding of the Reformation as something revolutionary throughout nearly the whole of Europe. Cyrrillus, alle geschichtlichen Personen sind für uns bloße Namen, wenn nicht, was Jeder gedacht und gethan und zur Aufgabe seines Lebens und Strebens gemacht hat, eine im Wesen des Geistes selbst begründeter Gedanke ist, ein Moment des fortgehenden Processes, in welchem der Geist mit sich selbst ringt, um alle Gegensäze, die immer wieder eine neue Schranke seines Selbstbewußtsyns sezen, zu überwinden’. 17 Karl Hase, Kirchengeschichte. Lehrbuch zunächst für akademische Vorlesungen (Leipzig: Weidmann’sche Buchhandlung, 1834), 414: ‘Zwingli […] war […] bei dem Vorwalten seines gesunden Menschenverstandes durch das Studium der H. Schrift selbständig zu einer Überzeugung gekommen, die sich weit rascher als Luther vom Katholicismus losriß’.

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However, when Hase then argues about the differences between the Reformation in Saxony and Switzerland, between Lutherans and the Reformed, he states that at least they both shared a common basic nature: and this was a German one.18 Moreover, something else is noticeable. Hase strongly emphasises the influence of the German, Lutheran Reformation upon, and its relationship to, the other European Reformation movements. In his depiction, it appears that there was no Reformation in any other country that did not occur without German influence or assistance.19 Even with regard to the Reformation in England he writes that Archbishop Thomas Cranmer, while seeking to involve the king in the Reformation, had been secretly wedded to a German girl.20 Hase also asserts a connection between this confessional development and the specific character of the nations and, with regard to the success or failure of the Protestant Reformation, he distinguishes between two main characters: the German (including Switzerland, Scandinavia and England) and the Romanic (France, Italy, Spain, etc.). With this opinion, Hase shares a very common point of view of his time, since it can be found in works of other authors like Herder, Ranke or Humboldt.21

18 Ibid., 388: ‘in ihrem Grundcharakter beide deutsch’. 19 Ibid., 438–42: there he mentions Austria, Sweden, Denmark, Norway, Iceland, Poland, Livonia and Courland. See for example ibid., 439: ‘Der deutsche Protestantismus hatte sich früh unter den höhern Ständen und Östreich verbreitet’. See also ibid., 440: ‘Nach Luthers Rathschlägen wurde die Reformation allmälig im Volke durchgeführt’ (in Sweden). Concerning Protestantism in France he writes: ‘Luthers Schriften gewannen ihm die ersten Herzen, aber Frankreichs Söhne Calvin und Beza gründeten die Gemeinden’ (ibid., 446). 20 Cf. ibid., 443: ‘Cranmer, […] einem deutschen Mädchen heimlich vermählt, suchte den König auch […] in die Reformation zu verwickeln’ (in the original highlighted by blockades). 21 Cf. for example Johann G. Herder, Ideen zur Philosophie der Geschichte der Menschheit, edited by Bollacher, Martin (10 vols.; Frankfurt a.M.: Deutscher Klassiker Verlag, 1989), 369: ‘Der natürlichste Staat ist also auch Ein Volk, mit Einem Nationalcharakter’. See also Wilhelm von Humboldt, ‘Über den Nationalcharakter der Sprachen (Bruchstück), in Humboldt, Wilhelm von, Werke in fünf Bänden, edited by Flitner, Andreas/Geil, Klaus (5 vols.; Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, 92002) vol. 3 Schriften zur Sprachphilosophie, 64– 81, on 75–7; Leopold von Ranke, Geschichten der romanischen und germanischen Völker von 1494 bis 1535 (3 vols.; Leipzig/Berlin: G. Reimer, 1824–84), vol. 1 (1824), XVIII: ‘In dieser Vereinigung haben sich sechs große Nationen, drey, in denen das romanische Element vorherrscht, die französische, spanische, italienische, drey, in denen das germanische, die deutsche, englische, scandinavische ausgebildet’. Cf. also Johannes Wischmeyer, ‘Reformation als Epoche und Strukturmoment. Protestantismustheorie und Historismus bei Karl von Hase und der Jenaer freisinnigen Theologie’, in Tanner, Klaus (ed.), Konstruktion von Geschichte. Jubelrede, Predigt, protestantische Historiographie (Leipzig: Evangelische Verlagsanstalt, 2012) 277–306, on 280: ‘Hier wird sichtbar, dass die frühhistoristische Kirchengeschichtsschreibung das Interesse der Allgemeinhistoriker an den Nationalitäten als den grundlegenden Einheiten historischer Entwicklung teilte’.

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The religious, especially the confessional, preference is part of this national character. Hase therefore considers the Romanic nations to tend to Catholicism, while the German nations had an affinity with Protestantism.22 He points out that this difference already influenced the acceptance of Christianity in late antiquity and the early Middle Ages. Hase writes that the Greek and Roman peoples, while in the process of decline, adopted Christianity as something foreign or extrinsic, while, on the other hand, for the German nations it was the starting point for a dynamic development based on their affinity to the unseen and infinite. In this context, he expresses the view that this affinity of the German nations to Christianity was related to a status of being free and victorious.23 Here one can already hear Hase criticise papal dominance during the Middle Ages as well as the Napoleonic reign and the ultramontane aspirations of his own time. In Hase’s view, this does not fit in with the German character. But the Reformation of the sixteenth century does, and it opened up the possibility for Germans to develop and foster their religious predisposition. Hase’s opinion thus fits in well with his biography, his political engagement, the affinity to Romanticism and the ideal of a united German nation.

Ferdinand Christian Baur and the question where Reformation took place As we look at Ferdinand Christian Baur’s conception of church history, we should expect less relevance of the national factor, because Baur wanted to decribe the ‘movement of the idea of the church’,24 which has to be detected by the method of speculation beyond all the individual and contingent factors such as personality, character and nationality.25 Nevertheless, he states that these aspects are 22 See Karl Hase, Kirchengeschichte. Lehrbuch zunächst für akademische Vorlesungen (Leipzig: Breitkopf & Härtel, 41841), 5: ‘Die wesentlichen Entwickelungen des christlichen Geistes sind der Katholicismus und Protestantismus, seine Hauptorgane der griechisch-römische und der germanische Volksgeist’. 23 See Hase, Kirchengeschichte (1834), 186: ‘Während der griechische und römische Volksgeist sich das Christenthum nur als etwas Fremdartiges im eignen Untergange aneignete, war das Gemüth des deutschen Volkes, wie es unter der Barbarei als lebendiger Keim verborgen lag, dem Unsichtbaren, Unendlichen zugewandt und fand erst im Christenthume seine lebendige Entwickelung. Daher die Deutschen, wo sie frei und siegreich waren, das Evangelium leicht gewähren ließen’. 24 Baur, Die Epochen, 249. Cf. ibid., 248f: ‘Oder soll denn etwa darüber noch ein Zweifel sein, ob die Geschichte der christlichen Kirche die Bewegung der Idee der Kirche ist?’. 25 Cf. Baur, An Herrn Dr. Karl Hase, 99 (= Baur, Ausgewählte Werke, vol. 5, 215): ‘Die Nationen gehen der Reihe nach in die Kirche ein, aber die Kirche selbst ist es, die sie an sich zieht, ihre Volksgeister bewältigt und bildet […], daß sie bei aller Verschiedenheit einen und denselben Charakter an sich tragen’.

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fundamental in shaping concrete life.26 This seems contradictory, but it is not: when Baur wants to detect the movement of the idea in history, he looks for these moments and those persons that can be identified in a special way with the fundamental transformations of the idea. Baur considers the idea as being the moving power of history, but it needs certain people who are able to recognise the spirit of the age and act accordingly. In Baur’s historical view, people like Emperor Constantine the Great or Pope Gregory VII become in a way the embodiment of the spirit of their age, and with regard to the Reformation Martin Luther was such a person. Among the many factors that worked together to cause the Reformation it was Luther who ‘became [the] centre and organ of a collective consciousness’.27 He was the trailblazing, ‘epoch-making Reformer’.28 On the other hand, Baur is not really interested in biographical details. It is sufficient to state that Luther grasped the spirit of the age. But Baur argues nevertheless that Luther and the Protestant Reformation brought a new aspect into history: personality. At this point, Baur considers universality and individuality to be linked together very closely.29 It is in this context that Baur emphasises Luther’s nationality: as one external fact he names the decentralised political structure in Germany, but then he turns towards Luther and declares that it had been the ‘genuine German’30 in Luther and that he had represented ‘the character of the German nature in its purest and noblest traits’.31 Exactly like Hase, Baur assumes an inherent predisposition of the German tribes to the ‘Licht der evangelischen Wahrheit’32 from as early as the times of Christianisation. This could mean the truth of the gospel in general, but 26 Cf. ibid., 98 (= Baur, Ausgewählte Werke, vol. 5, 214): ‘Dieses Recht der Nationalität erkenne ich wie das der Individualität vollkommen an; die Mannigkfaltigkeit und Verschiedenheit der Nationen und Individuen macht das concrete Leben der Geschichte aus’. 27 See for example Ferdinand C. Baur, Kirchengeschichte der neueren Zeit, von der Reformation bis zum Ende des achtzehnten Jahrhunderts, edited by Baur, Ferdinand F. (Tübingen: Fues, 1863), 4: ‘Wurde er [Luther] Mittelpunkt und Organ eines gemeinsamen Bewusstseins’. See also ibid., 5: ‘So viele allgemeine Momente auch zur Reformation zusammenwirkten, so ist es doch immer die Persönlichkeit des deutschen Reformators, auf die wir als den eigentlichen Quellpunkt des durch die Reformation neugeweckten religiösen Lebens zurückgehen müssen’. 28 Cf. ibid., 88: ‘Der bahnbrechende Reformator ist nur Luther’. 29 Cf. ibid., 4: ‘Nirgends sehen wir die beiden Momente, die überhaupt die Factoren jeder bedeutungsvollen geschichtlichen That sind, das allgemeine und das individuelle, so eng in einander eingreifen, wie in der Reformation’. 30 Ibid., 23: ‘ächt Deutsche’. 31 Cf. ibid: ‘So darf zugleich auch noch gesagt werden, dass eben das, was die Persönlichkeit des deutschen Reformators zu einer solchen macht, auch nur das ächt Deutsche in ihm war, […] in welchem […] der Charakter der deutschen Natur in ihren reinsten und edelsten Zügen sich darstellt’ (ibid.). 32 Ferdinand C. Baur, Die christliche Kirche vom Anfang des vierten bis zum Ende des sechsten Jahrhunderts in den Hauptmomenten ihrer Entwicklung (Tübingen: Fues, 1859), 14.

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is has the connotation of the truth of the Protestant interpretation of the gospel, as well. Even though Baur does not seem to be very interested in contingent aspects, he shares the notion of a national character.33 Baur does not really define what he means by ‘German’, but in the end he focusses on Saxony and the territories that could be identified with Germany at the beginning of the nineteenth century. Accordingly, the Reformation in other countries, even in Switzerland, plays a marginal role in Baur’s church history. The main purpose of mentioning these aspects seems to be to place the emphasis on Luther and on the German Reformation. Calvin is only mentioned on a few pages and primarily in the context of the development of Reformed theology, but not so much as a Reformer. Besides Luther, only Zwingli is given the title of Reformer by Baur, and he definitely dignifies him as the founder of a different kind of Protestant Reformation. However, with this, Baur wishes to provide an example of the plurality of Protestantism, and he then states: ‘Luther alone stood in the real arena, fighting for the cause of the Protestant Reformation’.34 It should be added that Baur considers the Reformation to be the definitive turning point in church history. Luther and his contemporaries marked the initial point of this new historical phase. The term ‘Reformation’ takes on a broader sense, meaning the whole period, which has not yet finished and in Baur’s point of view still continues.35 Yet in the narrow sense of the historical event and the specific period of church history, the term ‘Reformation’ is limited to that which took place in Germany during the first half of the sixteenth century. This is underlined by the fact that Baur uses the term ‘Counter-Reformation’ only for historical developments in German territories.36

Conclusions Looking at the histories of the Protestant Reformation written by Karl Hase and Ferdinand Christian Baur in the first half of the nineteenth century, one can observe a focus on Luther and events in Germany until the Peace of Augsburg of

33 Cf. also ibid., 7f, where he mentions that the German clans had accepted Christianity with ease (‘Leichtigkeit’). 34 Baur, Kirchengeschichte der neueren Zeit, 88: ‘Auf dem eigentlichen Kampfplatz, auf welchem die Sache der Reformation auszufechten war, stand nur Luther’. 35 See e. g. Baur, Die Epochen, 249, 263f. 36 See e.g Baur, Kirchengeschichte der neueren Zeit, 195, 247. See also Leopold von Ranke, Deutsche Geschichte im Zeitalter der Reformation (6 vols.; Berlin: Duncker und Humblot, 1839–47), vol. 5 (1843), 501, who used the term in a broader meaning.

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1555. Zwingli and the Reformation in Switzerland are mentioned and held in high esteem, but play a somewhat minor role. Obviously, Hase and Baur wrote their church histories as German professors addressing a German public (nevertheless, Hase’s church history was translated into French, English, Danish, Dutch, Swedish and Hungarian).37 Beyond that, however, the Protestant Reformation appears to be intertwined in a special way with the German nation and with its national character, which may include other Nordic countries that adopted the (Lutheran) Reformation. The dictum of there being a ‘national character’ is, however, claimed rather than attested or proved. In Baur’s view, the Protestant Reformation constitutes a deep incision in church history and the most important theological occurrence for the development of the idea of the church since its foundation in the Apostolic Age. Therefore, he regards Martin Luther not only as the foremost Reformer, but also as the outstanding example of the spirit of his time. In this respect, the focus on Luther and Germany could be understood as an example illustrative of the Protestant Reformation as a whole. However, he then narrows the perspective and takes Luther not only as an exemplary individual, but also as a typically German character. In the light of this, the Protestant Reformation becomes more than an event that simply took place in Germany. Theological and confessional differences are transferred into the national categories of German versus Romanic.38 The Protestant Reformation now appears to be more than a merely German event, but indeed a typically German affair. On the one hand, precisely what the German character should be and what is really meant by the term ‘German’ seems to be vague: does it mean the Protestant territories of the German Empire of the sixteenth century, such as Saxony, Hesse or Württemberg, including Switzerland, or rather in a broader sense northern Europe – England, the Netherlands, Scandinavia? On the other hand, ‘German’ seems to have a very distinct meaning: Protestant countries with a Protestant majority, and furthermore Germany within the borders of the unified nation that was longed for and yearned after, maybe something as expressed in the first verse of the Lied der Deutschen written in 1841 by August Heinrich Hoffmann von Fallersleben (1798–1874): ‘Von der Maas bis an die Memel, von der Etsch bis an den Belt’.39

37 Cf. the list at the end of Hase, Gesammelte Werke, vol. 10 Theologische Reden und Denkschriften (1892). 38 Cf. Hase, Kirchengeschichte (1834), 589f, where he sees Germany and France paradigmatically for the struggle between Protestantism and Roman Catholicism (‘Boden eines geistigen Kampfes, der Vermittlung und des gegenseitigen Hinüberziehens’). 39 August H. Hoffmann von Fallersleben, Deutsche Lieder aus der Schweiz (Zürich/Winterthur: Druck und Verlag des literarischen Comptoirs, 1842), 16.

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When Hase and Baur wrote their compendia, this had not come true yet. Germany still was divided into several more-or-less sovereign territories and was not a unified nation. It still was a fiction of sorts, a dream, a wish, but obviously one so strong that it even influenced prominent theologians. Hase and Baur participated in the spirit of their time and supported political aspirations by making the Protestant Reformation a national identification point. In this perspective, the Protestant Reformation seemed to be not just a German event that spread to other (Nordic) countries, but rather a typically German affair.

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Hase, Karl, Kirchengeschichte. Lehrbuch zunächst für akademische Vorlesungen (Leipzig: Weidmann’sche Buchhandlung, 1834). Hase, Karl, Kirchengeschichte. Lehrbuch zunächst für akademische Vorlesungen (Leipzig: Breitkopf & Härtel, 41841). Hase, Karl, Kirchengeschichte. Lehrbuch zunächst für akademische Vorlesungen (Leipzig: Breitkopf & Härtel, 111886). Hase, Karl, Die Republik des deutschen Volkes. Eine Stimme aus Sachsen von Karl von Steinbach (Leipzig: Breitkopf & Härtel, 1848). Haupt, Heinz-Gerhard/Langewiesche, Dieter (ed.), Nation und Religion in der deutschen Geschichte (Frankfurt a.M./New York: Campus, 2001). Herbst, Magdalena, Karl von Hase als Kirchenhistoriker (Tübingen: Mohr-Siebeck, 2012). Herder, Johann G., Ideen zur Philosophie der Geschichte der Menschheit, edited by Bollacher, Martin (10 vols.; Frankfurt a.M.: Deutscher Klassiker Verlag, 1989). Hester, Carl E., ‘Baurs Anfänge in Blaubeuren’, in Köpf, Ulrich (ed.), Historisch-kritische Geschichtsbetrachtung: Ferdinand Christian Baur und seine Schüler. 8. Blaubeurer Symposion (Sigmaringen: Thorbecke, 1994) 67–82. Hodgson, Peter C., The Formation of Historical Theology. A Study of Ferdinand Christian Baur (New York: Harper & Row, 1966). Hoffmann von Fallersleben, August H., Deutsche Lieder aus der Schweiz (Zürich/Winterthur: Druck und Verlag des literarischen Comptoirs, 1842). Humboldt, Wilhelm von, ‘Über den Nationalcharakter der Sprachen (Bruchstück), in Humboldt, Wilhelm von, Werke in fünf Bänden, edited by Flitner, Andreas/Geil, Klaus (5 vols.; Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, 92002), vol. 3 Schriften zur Sprachphilosophie, 64–81. Jaeger, Bernd, Karl von Hase als Dogmatiker (Gütersloh: Gütersloher Verlagshaus Gerd Mohn, 1990). Kirchhof, Tobias, Kirche als Einheit. Zur Darstellung des Frühkatholizismus bei Johann Adam Möhler (1796–1838) und Ferdinand Christian Baur (1792–1860) (Leipzig/Berlin: Edition Kirchhof & Francke, 2013). Köpf, Ulrich, ‘Baur, Ferdinand Christian’, in Religion in Geschichte und Gegenwart, edited by Betz, Hans D. (8 vols.; Tu¨ bingen: Mohr Siebeck, 41998–2007) vol. 1 (1998), 1183–5. Ranke, Leopold von, Deutsche Geschichte im Zeitalter der Reformation (6 vols.; Berlin: Duncker und Humblot, 1839–47). Ranke, Leopold von, Geschichten der romanischen und germanischen Völker von 1494 bis 1535 (3 vols.; Leipzig/Berlin: G. Reimer, 1824–84). Schilling, Heinz, ‘Comment to Thomas A. Brady’, in Brady, Thomas A., The Protestant Reformation in German History (Washington, DC: German Historical Institute, 1998) 35–47. Scholder, Klaus, ‘Baur, Ferdinand Christian’, in Theologische Realenzyklopädie, edited by Müller, Gerhard (36 vols.; Berlin: De Gruyter, 1976–2004) vol. 5 (1980), 352–9. Slenczka, Notger, ‘Die Einheit der Kirche und die Wahrheit der Reformation. Theologiegeschichtliche Erinnerungen an die Kontroverse zwischen J.A. Möhler und F.C. Baur angesichts der aktuellen Situation der Ökumene’, Kerygma und Dogma 48 (2002) 172–96. Slenczka, Notger, ‘Ethical Judgment and Ecclesiastical Self-Understanding: Ferdinand Christian Baur’s Interpretation of the Protestant Principle in the Controversy with Johann Adam Möhler’, in Bauspieß, Martin/Landmesser, Christof/Lincicum, David

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(ed.), Ferdinand Christian Baur and the History of Early Christianity (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2017) 45–66 = Slenczka, Notger, ‘Ethische Urteilsbildung und kirchliches Selbstverständnis. Ferdinand Christian Baurs Deutung des protestantischen Propriums in der Kontroverse mit Johann Adam Möhler als Korrektiv gegenwärtiger Selbstmissverständnisse’, in Bauspieß, Martin/Landmesser, Christof/Lincicum, David (ed.), Ferdinand Christian Baur und die Geschichte des frühen Christentums (Tübingen: Mohr-Siebeck, 2014) 53–74. Weber, Wolfgang E.J., ‘Protestantismus, Historismus, Borussianismus. Voraussetzungen und Dimensionen der Geschichtswissenschaft und des Geschichtsbildes im Deutschland des 19. Jahrhunderts’, in Tanner, Klaus (ed.), Konstruktion von Geschichte. Jubelrede, Predigt, protestantische Historiographie (Leipzig: Evangelische Verlagsanstalt, 2012) 307–19. Wischmeyer, Johannes, ‘Reformation als Epoche und Strukturmoment. Protestantismustheorie und Historismus bei Karl von Hase und der Jenaer freisinnigen Theologie’, in Tanner, Klaus (ed.), Konstruktion von Geschichte. Jubelrede, Predigt, protestantische Historiographie (Leipzig: Evangelische Verlagsanstalt, 2012) 277–306. Zachhuber, Johannes, ‘Ferdinand Christian Baurs Schellingrezeption. Einige Gedanken zu den geschichtsphilosophischen Grundlagen der Tübinger Schule’, in Danz, Christian (ed.), Schelling und die historische Theologie des 19. Jahrhunderts (Tübingen: MohrSiebeck, 2013) 151–70. Zillessen, Horst (ed.), Volk, Nation, Vaterland. Der deutsche Protestantismus und der Nationalismus (Gütersloh: Gütersloher Verlagshaus Gerd Mohn, 1970).

Fabrizio Mandreoli

Luther’s theology and the theological place of the Jews: thought-provoking relevance and connections in Erich Przywara’s theological proposal

Introduction Erich Przywara’s contribution1 was very fruitful in the theological and ecclesial dialogue with the Lutheran world,2 as a result not only of his biographical background – with him being the son of a Protestant mother and a Catholic father – but also of the original form of his way of thinking on polarities and tensions in the reality. This was true not only in regard to the Christian milieu. His many articles highlight his personal and intellectual relationship with Jewish writers and works. It is not only a quantitative issue but it brings to light some insights in his way of interpreting theological, philosophical and historical matters and directions. In other words we are persuaded that his reflection – which is sometimes quite dense and elliptic3 – has reached the persuasion that western and eastern history of Christianity, including the vicissitude of the confessional splits, has a theological crucial key in its relationship with the Jews and the underpinning messianic issue. In this context of the fifth centenary of Reformation4 we would like to illustrate some points according to the following three steps. 1 Thomas F. O’Meara, Erich Przywara, S.J.: His Theology and His World (Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame, 2002); Claudio Avogadri, Erich Przywara. Sull’uomo, sul mondo e su Dio (Assisi: Cittadella, 2016). 2 Erich Przywara/Hermann Sauer, Gespräch zwischen den Kirchen. Das Grundsätzliche (Nürnberg: Glock und Lutz, 1956). 3 John W. O’Malley, Quattro culture dell’Occidente (Milano: Vita e Pensiero, 2007). 4 The joint research group Ecclesia-Israel presented a panel called ‘Self-Representation and Reality: “Verus Israel” and the Reformation’s Legacy’ at the Fourth RefoRC Conference, Fondazione per le scienze religiose Giovanni XXIII, Bologna, 15–17 May 2014 with three contibutions: Fabrizio Mandreoli, ‘Erich Przywara’s Reflection on Luther’s Theology in connection with the Mystery of Israel: Significance for Church Representation’; Fabio Ruggiero, ‘A case for a Christian Supersessionism: The Afrikaners and the Calvinistic Interpretation of South African Theology’; Fabio Todesco, ‘Representing “figurae”: The Reformation’s Role in Erich Auerbach’s Historical Perspectivism’. This text has been also used in the seminarial meeting at the Lonergan Institute at Boston College on October–December 2014.

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Firstly we will synthetically deal with some studies that Przywara dedicated to Luther so as to show the correspondence in his thought between his metaphysical frame and his theology of history of salvation. This has a relevant consequence on Przywara’s interpretation of Christianity and, in a more general way, of western civilisation. Secondly, to this purpose we will consider the table of contents of two short and intense texts: Idee Europa5 and the closing section of one of his last works, Logos, Abendland, Reich, Commercium, which is a collection of four texts. In the third part we will present some of the fundamental parameters which are very important to confront with when it comes to Christian churches in their identities and theological frames.

Analogy, the theology of the cross, and Luther One of the symbolically most manifest ecumenical engagements was the confrontation with Karl Barth,6 whose importance as a representative of dialectic theology is unquestioned. This was the well-known debate on analogia entis and analogia fidei/analogia crucis.7 This debate has been reopened in recent reflections8 in the Catholic field by Hans Urs von Balthasar (Karl Barth. Darstellung und Deutung seiner Theologie, 1976) and in the Protestant field by Eberhard Jüngel (Gott als Geheimnis der Welt. Zur Begründung der Theologie des Gekreuzigten im Streit zwischen Theismus und Atheismus, 1978). Bonhoeffer himself – who was quite close to barthian positions to a certain extent – critically considers the method of Przywara in Akt und Sein9 despite praising his shrewd analytical attitude.10 In a recent article such a debate has been well presented and summarised by Albarello.11 5 José L. Narvaja, ‘La crisi di ogni politica cristiana. Erich Przywara e l’idea d’Europa’, La Civiltà Cattolica 3977 (2016) 437–48; Fabrizio Mandreoli, ‘L’idea d’Europa di Erich Przywara: una riflessione critica per l’ora attuale’, Rivista di Teologia dell’Evangelizzazione 18 (2014) 187–221. 6 Erich Przywara, ‘Vorwort’, in Przywara/Sauer, Gespräch zwischen den Kirchen, 7–9; Niels C. Nielsen Jr., ‘The Debate Between Karl Barth and Erich Przywara: A New Evaluation of Protestant and Roman Catholic Differences’, Rice University Studies 40 (1953) 24–46. 7 Gerhard L. Müller, ‘Analogie’, in Lexikon für Theologie und Kirche (11 vols.; Freiburg i.B.: Herder, 2006) vol. 1, 581–2; Martha Zechmeister, ‘Przywara E.’, in Lexikon für Theologie und Kirche, vol. 8, 688–9. 8 See Pier A. Sequeri, ‘Analogia’, in Dizionario Teologico Interdisciplinare (3 vols.; Torino: Marietti, 1977) vol. 1, 341–51; Thomas Marschler, ‘Analogia Fidei. Anmerkungen zu einem Grundprinzip Theologischer Schriftermeneutik’, Theologie und Philosophie 87 (2012) 208–36. 9 See Fulvio Ferrario, Bonhoeffer (Roma: Carocci, 2014). 10 Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Atto ed essere. Filosofia trascendentale ed ontologia nella teologia sistematica, edited by Gallas, Alberto (Brescia: Queriniana, 1993), 17–67; Alberto Gallas, ‘L’antinomia atto-essere tra filosofia e teologia. Analisi dell’opera Akt und Sein di Dietrich

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Our utmost interest is to show how within his analogical thought Przywara develops an unexpected reflection rooted in his meditation on the Lutheran theology of the cross. This development clearly indicates that his thinking has always been on the move. In a continuous dialogue with the issues of his time he was on a quest trying to find out Catholic – i. e. universal – reading keys towards the clarification of such issues. Within this frame it is possible to recognise a surprising influence of Luther on Przywara. Throughout his entire life Przywara was interested in Luther’s works12 but it was especially during the tragic years of World War II that he dedicated himself to a thorough study of these works,13 after a deep analysis of Kierkegaard’s works dating back to the twenties (1929). During the war period the reflection on the analogy understood as the rhythm of being and knowledge slowly led Przywara to reflect on another principle, which gradually became the organising principle of his theology. This principle is derived from the New Testament, the theology of the Fathers and the reflection of Luther: the principle of admirabile commercium.14 In this context Luther became object of a detailed study and by means of many historical and systematic reflections Przywara showed, through dialogue and confrontation between the theology of the churches, the possibility of a deeper understanding of Christianity both for Catholics and for Protestants: Evangelische katholizität, Katholische evanzelität (1960).15

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Bonhoeffer’, in Gallas, Alberto, Non santi ma uomini. Studi bonhoefferiani (Torino: Claudiana, 2008) 39–97. Duilio Albarello, ‘L’abisso originario dell’analogia. La proporzione eccedente dell’umano e del divino in Erich Przywara’, in Sequeri, Pier A./Ubbiali, Sergio (ed.), Nominare Dio invano? Orizzonti per la teologia filosofica (Milano: Glossa, 2009) 153–78. Cf. Erich Przywara, ‘Luther konsequent’, Scholastik 12 (1937) 386–92. Eva-Maria Faber, ‘Przywara Erich’, Theologische Realenzyklopädie 28 (1997) 607–10, on 607: ‘Nach Aufhebung der Stimmen der Zeit (1941) war Przywara in der Altakademikerseelsorge tätig. Gegen Kriegsende ermöglichte ein Aufenthalt auf Schloß Stolberg eingehendere LutherStudien’. Faber, ‘Przywara Erich’, 608–9: ‘Dem Analogieverständnis Przywaras, das von der je größeren Unähnlichkeit Gottes und der Bewegung von oben her geprägt ist, entspricht materialtheologisch ein die Unverfügbarkeit und Unbegreiflichkeit betonendes Gottesbild. Neben Przywaras Wertschätzung für Duns Scoto zeigen sich hier auch ignatianische Einflüsse: der Mensch steht vor der maiestas divina, vor dem Deus semper maior, der Gehorsam und Dienst einfordert. Dieses Personalität und Willen betonende Gottesbild verankert Przywara heilsgeschichtlich: Gott ist nicht in Allgemeinideen zu fassen, er begegnet in Geschichte als Person mit souveränem Willen erschreckend konkret, unableitbar und unverfügbar: gegen das entrückte Leuchten der Idee trat das blutige Kreuz. Der direkte Erkenntnisweg zu Gott zerbricht, um nicht einfach in negative Theologie zu münden, sondern sich von der alle menschlichen Vorstellungen durchkreuzenden Offenbarung Gottes (auch in Widerspruch und in Verfinsterung) überwältigen zu lassen. Insofern erweist sich Przywaras Ansatz als zutiefst kreuzestheologisch’. Przywara/Sauer, Gespräch zwischen, 77: ‘Positives und Negatives im Mysterium Luthers. Das

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These twofold perspectives – analogy and theology of the cross – allowed him to formulate some historical and theological diagnoses very effective in the attempt to read the present time (his time and ours, as well) of the churches. In particular, he appreciated more and more what he defined the Grund-Theologumenon Alten und Neuen Bund: that is Zentralität des Mysterium Crucis. The very point of this crucial notion lies in the salvific exchange occurred in the history and in the person of Jesus between man and God.16 The biblical references to support this idea are 2 Cor 5:18–21,17 2 Cor 8:918 and especially Phil 2:5–10: Christ Jesus, who, though he was in the form of God, did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped, but emptied himself, by taking the form of a servant, being born in the likeness of men. And being found in human form, he humbled himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross. Therefore God has highly exalted him and bestowed on him the name that is above every name, so that […].

He claimed that this salvific exchange19 – that Christian tradition calls admirabile commercium – can be the pivot around which the whole history of salvation and the Christian vision of reality as well can be conceived.20 According to his reflection only few authors of Christian tradition have been able to grasp all its structural theological centrality and among them Luther may be considered the most outstanding.21 In fact Przywara’s analogical thought progressively

16 17

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Positive: das Mysterium des Kreuzes gegen alle “ismen”. Das Negative: Luthers Flucht aus dem realen Kreuz, das allein in der Kirche durchritten werden kann, weil es sonst das nackte Kreuz wird’. Eva-Maria Faber, ‘Commercium’, in Lexikon für Theologie und Kirche, vol. 2, 1274–5. ‘All this is from God, who through Christ reconciled us to himself and gave us the ministry of reconciliation; that is, in Christ God was reconciling the world to himself, not counting their trespasses against them, and entrusting to us the message of reconciliation. Therefore, we are ambassadors for Christ, God making his appeal through us. We implore you on behalf of Christ, be reconciled to God. For our sake he made him to be sin who knew no sin, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God’. ‘For you know the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, that though he was rich, yet for your sake he became poor, so that you by his poverty might become rich’. Erich Przywara, Katholische Krise (Düsseldorf: Patmos, 1967), 207: ‘Es ist, von Paulus zu Irenäus zu Augustin zu Luther (als dem letzen dieser Tradition) das Mysterium des Tausch und Austausch und Umtausch und Eintausch zwischen Gott und Mensch und Zwischen Mensch und Mensch, das in Christo und als Christo (dynamisch) sich vollzieht’. Przywara, Katholische Krise, 207–8: ‘Diese ur-christliche und ur-katholische Tradition hat in Luther ihren wahren Höhepunkt, und die Rechtfertigung aus dem Glauben ist nur der Vordergrund, dessen Hintergrund und Untergrund das admirabile commercium, das Wunder des Tausches ist’. Erich Przywara, Logos, Abendmahl, Reich, Commercium (Düsseldorf: Patmos, 1964), 126: ‘Dieses commercium des connubium, wie es die zentrale christliche Wirklichkeit ist, ist nur in drei geschichtliche Theologien eingegangen: in die Theologie des Irenäus, des Augustinus und Luthers’.

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developed integrating a cross theology that is for him part of the most authentic heritage of the Christian tradition.22 In this process of integration Luther had a major role. Although Przywara was well aware of some problems of Luther’s theological outlook, the German Reformer was an authentic interpreter of this tradition. For this reason he became – together with Augustine, Dionysius and Newman – one of the most appreciated and quoted theologians by Przywara himself. In order to fully understand the concrete working of his method and namely to grasp the real value of the centrality of the cross, meant as the structural principle – also in his connection with Israel – we have to approach the original modus procedendi of Przywara. For this purpose we can mention an interesting example in an article on the nation, the state and the church.23 Here not only does the author exemplify his methodology but he also sets out the ideological and spiritual resistance to Nazism he shared with all the staff of the review Stimmen der Zeit.24 Incidentally, it must be remembered that such a resistance against the Nazi barbarian, based on ideas and ideological representations, was displayed in many different ways as for example when he publicly and polemically dealt with the Christian idea of Reich (‘kingdom’).25 In the article ‘Nation, Staat, Kirche’ he seeks theoretical tools to oppose the Nazi ideology and identifies in a dualistic way two models of political philosophy: Plato’s and Aristotle’s. He opts for Aristotelianism because it better helps to sustain personal freedom and uniqueness of the individual. Przywara is here clearly against the theories of the Deutsche Glaubensbewegung (a non-Christian neo-pagan religion which tries to develop a uniquely Germanic Christianity in harmony with the aims of Nazism) and in particular he is against Alfred Rosenberg’s book Der Mythus des 20. Jahrhunderts (1931), which held a racist radical vision with the consequent dismissal of the Old Testament for its Jewish origins and with the union in a single and homogeneous community/church – even with the overcoming of the division between Catholics and Lutherans – in the name of a Germanic Church no more corrupted by Judeo-Christianity. It is interesting to see how Przywara is radically against this view that, in a single moment, eliminates the permanent Jewish origins of Christianity and homogenises Catholic and Protestant churches. Przywara is able to discern how the

22 Cf. Christian Lagger, Dienst. Kenosis in Schöpfung und Kreuz bei Erich Przywara SJ (Innsbruck: Tyrolia-Verlag, 2007). 23 Erich Przywara, ‘Nation, Staat, Kirche’, Stimmen der Zeit 125 (1933) 374–5. 24 Cf. Martin F. Ederer, ‘Propaganda Wars: “Stimmen der Zeit” and the Nazis, 1933–1935’, The Catholic Historical Review 90/3 (2004) 456–72. 25 Przywara, Logos, 169–70.

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totalitarian overcoming of the Protestant and Catholic divide and as well as the solving of the basic Christian connection with Israel are both false and deceitful. His theology shows to have some keys to interpret the basic structures of the history of salvation, which the Nazi ideological movements intended to abolish in favour of a pagan, idolatrous and so radically anti-Christian vision. This question highlights the central foundations of Christianity. In this analysis Przywara further developed his teaching on analogy and used his peculiar methodology which was able to keep opposite and contrasting elements together in a dynamic way.26 It should be noted here that his method, used in these overall interpretations, is very often built through sharp polarisations in order to find new ways of thinking and representation between polarities. This can be seen sometimes as a limit, but it also indicates his original capacity for synthesis and critique.27 It has been said: ‘Przywara’s tendency to impose strict taxonomies on his subjects can seem procrustean. A quick review of the opening sections of Analogia entis shows how Przywara tends to lump a range of modern thinkers into discrete, opposing camps in order to present his own view as the only viable alternative’;28 in fact ‘throughout his writings he tends to present his subjects according to systematic and sometimes rigid taxonomies. Even when he comments on such untidy topics as church history, spirituality and contemporary politics, he generally schematises the material in terms of binary relationships and oppositions’.29 Aware of these methodological issues, we can sustain that his way of theological interpretation is able to compose a theology of the cross and a theory of analogy capable of keeping together different and apparently conflicting aspects of the history of salvation and to discern also the theological pattern of that history.30 Through this composition he provides an insightful theological, philosophical and historical key.

26 See Albarello, ‘L’abisso originario dell’analogia’, 155–6: ‘Infatti l’oscillazione analogica che connota l’unità degli opposti sul piano orizzontale, entro l’ambito degli enti finiti, si innerva incessantemente su di una ritmica verticale, che apre verso il movimento di una proporzione sempre eccedente tra la finitezza creaturale e l’infinito divino. Dunque emerge una nozione di analogia come principio fondamentale, non però inteso al modo di una realtà fissa da cui tutto il resto venga dedotto e a cui tutto venga ricondotto, bensì quale dimensione originariamente energetica e fluttuante, che è instancabilmente al lavoro nel darsi dell’essere e nel costituirsi del pensiero’. 27 Brian P. Dunkle, ‘Service in the “Analogia Entis” and Spiritual Works of Erich Przywara’, Theological Studies 73 (2012) 339–62. 28 Ibid., 335. 29 Ibid., 342. 30 Cf. Eva-Maria Faber, ‘Skandal und Torheit. Die Katholische Kreuzestheologie Erich Przywaras. Zum 450. Todestag von Martin Luther’, Geist und Leben 69 (1996) 338–53.

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A key to understand In the attempt to identify this multisided hermeneutical key we will analyse the structure, the table of contents and some extracts from Idee Europa31 and from another work of his, Logos. In the latter Przywara summarises his reflections on several central themes while further developing a vision of Christianity based on the Gospel of John.32 Using a series of ideal-types Przywara presents his reflection on Europe according to the four phases as listed in the German original version: Europa Platonisch oder Aristotelisch I. Platonisch oder Aristotelisch II. Platonische Mythos Europa III. Aristotelische Form Europa: Geographie Europa; Geokultur Europa IV. Die Namen Europa und Asien

Politisches Europa I. Politik und Politisch: Burg, Reich, Staat, Bund II. Politisches Europa: Burg Rom und Burg Wien

Geistiges Europa I. Geist: Rationaler Geist; Geist germanisch, lateinisch, griechisch, hebräisch II. Europäischer Geist: Zwischen kalvinischem Kapitalismus und jüdisch russischem Marxismus

Christliches Europa I. Das Christliche: Kosmos im Austausch II. Christliches Europa: Christliches Mittelalter, christliche Aufklärung, christliche Restauration, christlicher Austausch This table of contents clearly shows how the author offers a history of the idea of Europe in a philosophical and theological sense, highlighting the mutual and multifaceted influence between Jewish-Christian theologies and different forms 31 Erich Przywara, Idee Europa (Nürnberg: Glock und Lutz, 1955); Erich Przywara, L’idea d’Europa. La ‘crisi’ di ogni politica ‘cristiana’, edited by Mandreoli, Fabrizio/Narvaja, José L. (Trapani: Il Pozzo di Giacobbe, 2013); Erich Przywara, En torno a una idea de Europa, edited by Mandreoli, Fabrizio/Narvaja, José L. (Buenos Aires: Instituto Thomas Falkner, 2015). 32 Erich Przywara, Christentum gemäß Johannes (Nürnberg: Glock und Lutz, 1954).

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of power/rule. In the section Christliches Europa, after critically rereading Calvinist and Lutheran reforms, he explains that the original sense of the word christlich, namely the messianic anointing of Jesus of Nazareth,33 is applied to the members of the church. Jesus as the anointed one is described as the Jewish messiah and as such as the saviour of all the peoples.34 He is the messiah for the Jewish people and that opens up all people’s access to the messianic salvation. In Jesus of Nazareth’s life an exchange occurred establishing a new covenant for the reconciliation of men with God and with one other. The doctrine of the exchange gives shape not only to the identity and mission of Jesus of Nazareth, but also to the ones of his community, i. e. the church.35 At this point the author asks what the service of Christians in Europe may be: the response is related to the way in which he explained the adjective christlich: Darin also steht der ‘Dienst’ eines christlichen Europa als christlichen Abendlands: die eine Diakonie des erlösenden Austausch mit und in Christo zu vollziehen d. h. (im Wortsinn von diakonia) den Einen Eilboten und Tischdiener-Dienst, um eine Welt ohne Christus und ohne Gott zu laden und zu bedienen zum Hochzeitsmahl des Sohnes des Königs.

In contrast to this ‘idea’ of a new covenant, which essentially is a service of reconciliation, he shows that many attempts of establishing Christianity into a political and social structure often turned into a caricature of Christianism as a reissue of a new old covenant. He underpins this programmatic assertion with the works of the historian Friedrich Heer, who points out that every idea of an implementation of the kingdom of God on earth36 – at the basis, for example, of

33 Cf. Luke 4:16–19: ‘And he came to Nazareth, where he had been brought up. And as was his custom, he went to the synagogue on the Sabbath day, and he stood up to read. And the scroll of the prophet Isaiah was given to him. He unrolled the scroll and found the place where it was written, The Spirit of the Lord is upon me because he has anointed me to proclaim good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim liberty to the captives and recovering of sight to the blind, to set at liberty those who are oppressed, to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favour’. 34 Cf. Luke 2:29–32. 35 Cf. Eph 2:11–18: ‘Therefore remember that at one time you Gentiles in the flesh, called “the uncircumcision” by what is called the circumcision, which is made in the flesh by hands – remember that you were at that time separated from Christ, alienated from the commonwealth of Israel and strangers to the covenants of promise, having no hope and without God in the world. But now in Christ Jesus you who once were far off have been brought near by the blood of Christ. For he himself is our peace, who has made us both one and has broken down in his flesh the dividing wall of hostility by abolishing the law of commandments expressed in ordinances, that he might create in himself one new man in place of the two, so making peace, and might reconcile us both to God in one body through the cross, thereby killing the hostility. And he came and preached peace to you who were far off and peace to those who were near. For through him we both have access in one Spirit to the Father’. 36 Friedrich Heer, The Holy Roman Empire (Sheffield: Phoenix Press, 2002); Gian L. Podestà, L’ultimo Messia. Profezia e sovranità nel Medioevo (Bologna: Il Mulino, 2014).

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the Holy Roman Empire and all forms of institutional Christian policies – has always been based on a radical misconception of the Bible. According to this persuasive interpretation no attention has been given to the newness of the new covenant in its link with the peculiar type of messianism of Jesus. Instead the church has often been interpreted as a sort of renewed old covenant. In this false interpretation the church unavoidably becomes a new Israel. This identification implies that, instead of being at the service of reconciliation with the distant ones and the enemies, the Christian community becomes a new chosen people, losing the consciousness of its destination to a universal service/diakonia. For Przywara this recurring structure of interpretation does not take into account the messiahship of Jesus performed as a new covenant in the salvific exchange. The idea of a Christian order of society has had and still has a variety of configurations that all tend to be a version – in a substitutionist or supersessionist way – of the old covenant. History is full of this kind of attempt: making the church – or a people, a state, an empire, a political party – a ‘new old people of God’. The quotation of Hebrews 13:12 sounds here crucial in order to show the alternative – and the structurally outcast – service of the messiah and of his community: ‘For this reason Jesus died also outside the city, in order to purify the people from sin with his own blood. Let us, then, go to him outside the camp and share his shame. For there is no permanent city for us here on earth’. This quotation indicates the specific existence of Christians and of the church, which can never be sacrificed in the name of building a Christian kingdom, or in the name of an identification with a Christian civilisation or a single culture claiming to be Christian. The church’s service and mission is to follow Christ outside the walls of the city, where he died as a powerless man in order to gather the whole of humanity, even those who are believed cursed and abandoned by God. According to the Christian revelation, the revelation of God happens at the periphery of history and his universal irradiation is ever from the margins. This perspective is further explored in Logos, Abendland, Reich, Commercium, which was written in 1964. This was one of the last works, perhaps the most synthetic and able to recapitulate his mains ideas.37 Here he shows how the 37 Przywara, Logos, 171: ‘Die erste Konzeption dieses Kapitels war der Inhalt von Sonntagnachmittagen im kleinen Kreis während der Bonbenjahre 1944/45 im Anschluß an allmonatliche theologische Abendvorträge, die der Verf. Seit 1942 im Auftrag von Kardinal Faulhaber in München hielt: mit seinen Zuhörern wandernd vom zerstörten Bürgersaal durch fünf Kirchen, die nacheinander zerstört wurden, und die, als theologische Vortragszyklen, später ausgearbeitet als Alter und Neuer Bund im Heroldverlag 1956 erschienen sind. Die Theologie des Commercium wie sie um 1960 zu ihrer vorliegenden Form ausgearbeitet wurde, bildet den eigentlichen Kern dieser Predigtzyklen Alter und Neuer Bund, wie aber auch den Kern der vorgesehenen dreiteiligen Theologie der Evangelien, deren erster Teil als Christentum gemäß Johannes 1954 bei Glock und Lutz herauskam’.

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admirabile commercium is the very key to his theological vision that enhances: the theology of the cross of Luther; a developed doctrine of Austausch, i. e. the salvific exchange or commercium; his own theory of analogy; and the crucial theological relationship with the Jews. What follows is the index of the last part of the work which speaks for itself:38 1. Commercium (katallage¯ – Austausch) a. Evangelium, Zweiter Korintherbrief, Philipperbrief b. Irenäus, Augustinus, Luther c. Struktur des commercium: commercium und Analogie d. Theologie des commercium: Christus al commercium; Commercium des All; Commercium im Ich; Trinitarisch-mariologisches commercium 2. Commercium als konkretes Welt-Prinzip a. gegenüber Identität und Transzendenz b. im Gegensatz zwischen Katholisch, Reformatorisch, Ostkirchlich 3. Austausch-Geheimnis Israels im Austausch-Geheimnis des Abendlands

The theological ‘mystery’ of the ‘exchange’ The index of the last chapter of Logos, Abendland, Reich, Commercium effectively shows the structure of Przywara’s reflection and his ability to grasp together different issues at a glance. Starting from a commentary of some biblical texts he makes clear the overall centrality of commercium, particularly in the theologies of Irenaeus, Augustine and Luther. He highlights how this commercium/exchange can be seen as the core of the messiahship of Jesus of Nazareth.39 For this reason the commercium/exchange is meant as the ultimate perspective able to embrace all realities: creation, revelation and redemption.40 The – so to speak – 38 Ibid., 9. 39 Ibid., 124: ‘Was im Messias Jesus war, ist aber eben der Hintausch und Austausch und Umtausch aus der Form Gottes in die Form des Sklaven […]. In diesem äußersten Unten aber vollzieht sich die Umwandlung der Umwandlung: Er, der abstieg… in das je Untere der Erde…, Er ist der Aufsteigende übertan alle Himmel, daß Er durchfülle zu Fülle das Allgesamt (Eph 4:10). So steht, von Gott her, ein volles Darum zwischen dem äußersten Erniedrigt der Form des Sklaven und einem Über- erhöht zum Kyrios Jesus Messias in Glorie Gott Vaters. Form Gottes wird ausgetauscht in Form des Sklaven, daß Form des Sklaven (in der radikalen Weise des Lamm geschlachtet) selber erscheine in Glorie Gott Vaters’. 40 Ibid., 128–9: ‘Diese gesamten Linien von den Evangelien zu den Paulinen zu Irenäneus zu Augustinus zu Luther, führen in eine theologische Struktur des commercium. Diese theologische Struktur, die die Offenbarung selber bietet, steht als eigentliche OffenbarungsTheologie den Philosophischen Theologien gegenüber, die die Offenbarung auf platonische und aristotelische Grund-Begriffe zurückführen und darum die Grund-Symbole der Offenbarung, wie es Hochzeit, Leib, commercium sind, auflösen müssen zu jenem Nebeneinander theologischer Traktate, wie es die Dogmatiken bis heute bieten. Denn das commercium, als

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commercium principle is also deeply connected with the analogy: in fact the very action of speaking and thinking about God – which is made possible for human beings through analogy – is fulfilled in a definitive way in the salvific exchange that occurs in Jesus the messiah.41 Indeed, analogy is the basic rule in the process of naming God, while the doctrine of commercium is intended as the core of history of salvation that is the true content of this process. In a (too) simple way: analogy is the linguistic and analytical methodology, the admirable commercium is the very matter of the discourse. In other words, naming God is possible for human beings only through analogy, but his name has been fully revealed in the revelation of the Trinity in the cross of Jesus.42 This structure of revelation which is suspended between analogy and Jesus’s cross keeps every theological reflection open and on the move. For this reason in Przywara the theology of admirabile commercium can be taken as the basic key of many theological treatises and can be useful in re-reading the philosophical theology and every theology of revelation43 in a deeper way. letzte Tiefe von Hochzeit und Leib, ist wesentlich jenes Letzte, auf das alles zurückgeführt werden muß (in jener reductio in Mysterium eines ordo mysteriorum, wie es das Vaticanum fordert: Denz 1796), das aber selber auf nichts andres zurückgeführt werden kann, wie es für ein Letztes Mysterium selbstverständlich ist. Commercium ist das Wesen Christi: weil die sogenannte hypostatische Union, die Er ist als Gott und Mensch Eine Person, selber das grundlegende commercium ist […]. Commercium als Wesen Christi ist aber dann auch das einzige Mysterium, in dem der Gott, den nie einer eräugte herausgeführt und ausgelegt ist im Sohn (John 1:18). Commercium endlich ist das Wesen von Kirche, Christentum, Christ […]’. 41 Ibid., 129–33. 42 Ibid., 131: ‘Gerade so aber ist commercium nicht nur formal das faktisch Konkrete der Analogie: weil jede mögliche verwirklichte Ordnung zwischen Schöpfer und Geschöpf solche faktische Konkretheit der Analogie ist. Sondern das Ungeheuerliche des commercium ist gerade, daß es das gemäße Bild und Symbol der ungeheuerlichen Untiefen (bathe¯) Gottes ist, wie sie in der Analogie verborgen liegen. So wenig das Ungeheuerliche des commercium, als der geradezu Verwechslung in Auswechslung, sich aus der Analogie ableiten läßt, so sehr ist das Ungeheuerliche des commercium eräugte Ungeheuerlichkeit einer uneraugbaren Analogie, wie Jesus Christus das Ur- und End des commercium, so sehr Ikon des Unsichtbaren Gottes ist, daß der Gott, den nie jemals einer eräugte, herausgeführt und ausgelegt ist in Ihm und als Er, so daß, wer Mich eräugt, eraugt hat den Vater, und daß also die Untiefen der Reichtümer des Unsichtbaren Gottes eraugt sind in der Breite und Länge und Höhe und Tiefe und dem Überhinaus-Geworfen (hyper-ballein) dessen, was Christus als commercium und commercium als Christus ist: erfüllt aufs All-Ganz der Fülle Gottes’. 43 Ibid., 133: ‘Aus diesem Grundsätzlichen ergibt sich nun das, was man Theologie des commercium nennen kann, dann aber nicht als einzelnen locus theologicus, wie heutige Dogmatik, katholische wie reformatorische, getrennte Traktate aufreiht, sondern eine Theologie des commercium in jenem totalen Sinn, wie Evangelium nach Matthäus, Zweiter Korintherbrief, Römerbrief, Philipperbrief, Irenäus, Augustinus, Luther das commercium als das Eine und Einzige, alles andere einschließenden Sinn haben, und ohne das auch die einzelnen Stücke nicht verstanden werden können. Einer philosophischen Theologie, die die einzelnen Stücke der Offenbarung in den Grundbegriffen des Aristoteles oder früher Platons, oder

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This category can be used to describe the identity and the mission of Jesus in his Trinitarian roots and in his historical manifestations, the overall structure which binds together everybody and everything, the deep side of every personal identity. So through this tool it is possible to portray Trinitarian life both in immanence and in economic manifestation, and the mysterious welcoming of that by human beings. In this overall fresco he shows the commercium as the concrete principle that structures the world in a tension between identity and transcendence44 and doing that he proposes uncountable references to the Catholic, Lutheran, Christian oriental, Jewish traditions.45 Particularly, he focusses on two – theological, spiritual and also political – problems: the historical split between the different Christian confessions and the place of Israel in the history of salvation. This last problem is questioned mainly according to Rom 11:11–15: So I ask, did they stumble in order that they might fall? By no means! Rather through their trespass salvation has come to the Gentiles, so as to make Israel jealous. Now if their trespass means riches for the world, and if their failure means riches for the Gentiles, how much more will their full inclusion mean! Now I am speaking to you Gentiles. Inasmuch then as I am an apostle to the Gentiles, I magnify my ministry in order somehow to make my fellow Jews jealous, and thus save some of them. For if their rejection means the reconciliation of the world, what will their acceptance mean but life from the dead?

According to his vision the articulated vicissitude of the Jews – with his structural dimension of exchange related to the messianic issue – comes to be a key to interpret the history of western civilisation and of Christianity with its many fractures and separations, confessional as well.46 Specifically, the mystery that möglicherweise auch eines östlichen Philosophen ordnet, tritt damit eigentlichste die Theologie der Offenbarung gegenüber, deren Mittelpunkt nicht ein Sein ist, sondern das commercium’. 44 Ibid., 148: ‘So aber erscheint das volle commercium als konkretes Welt-Prinzip. Da es letztes Mysterium ist, ist aus ihm nichts ableitbar. Aber alles andere ist auf dieses letzte Mysterium zurückzuführen, in jenem ordo mysteriorum, in dem das Vatikanische Konzil die einzig mögliche Theologie, und die einzig mögliche Einheit von Philosophie und Theologie sieht (Denz 1796). Eben darum aber auch, weil es letztes Mysterium ist, ist es voll das, was der greise Simeon im Tempel sagt über Ihn, dessen Wesen das commercium ist: Sieh, Dieser liegt da zu Fall und Auferstehung…, und zum Zeichen, dem man widerspricht (zum Anti-Legomenon Logos: Luke 2:34). Das commercium ist dieses Anti-Legomenon in der gesamten Welt und Geschichte. Und es ist das Anti-Legomenon auch und gerade in Israel (wie Simeon es ausdrücklich sagt), das heißt aber dann im Israel Gottes (Gal 6:16) von Kirche und Christentum: da das Geheimnis der Spaltungen in ihm liegt’. 45 Cf. ibid., 148–53. 46 Ibid., 164: ‘Commercium als Austausch auf dem Sklavenmarkt ist also zugleich das innerste Geheimnis des Menschlichen und Christlichen und folgerichtig das Zeichen, dem man wi-

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allows us to understand the history of salvation in dialectic with human history is that of the union reconciled ‘in’ Jesus, who is the messiah of the salvific exchange, bringing peace and salvation to the Jews and the non-Jews, to the near ones and the far ones.47 The mystery of Israel – including even the fact that some have welcomed the messiah and others have rejected him, but also in this case Israel still remains with a fundamental mission – becomes, in this way, the basic mystery and symbol of all human history intertwined with the history of salvation for both Israel and the church – composed in its turn of Jews and gentiles.

derspricht als der Torheit und dem Ärgernis. Der Sklaven-Markt ist aufgerichtet durch die ganze Geschichte hindurch, daß eben so die Hochzeit zwischen Gott und Mensch sich vollziehe. Jerusalem war zerstört und verkauft durch das heidnische Imperium Romanum, daß der adventliche Geist des Alten Bunds dieses Imperium in all sein Fortleben hinein bis heute durchforme. Die Christliche Antike, in der ein versklavtes Athen wie ein versklavtes Jerusalem im Tode fruchtbar waren, wurde ebenso in den Tod verkauft und gehochzeitet: in der Zerstörung Roms und Konstantinopel-Byzanz durch Völkerwanderung und Türkensturm, daß der Geist dieser Christlichen Antike, in ihrer Vermählung zwischen Griechentum, Römertum und Christentum, das neue Reich durchforme, wie es als Sacrum Imperium zwischen West und Ost und Nord und Süd erstand. Dieses Sacrum Imperium ward seinerseits in den Tod verkauft und gehochzeitet vom karolingischen Anfang bis zum habsburgischen Ende durch den Verrat so gut wie aller christlichen und katholischen Könige und Fürsten, hinein in das heutige absolute Chaos, das die einzige Einheit der Menschheit ist, aber Chaos, über dem eben darum, wie uranfänglich, der Geist Gottes neu-befruchtend schwebt. Das ist das reale Abendland einer heutigen Stunde des Abendlands: universaler Auskauf auf dem Sklavenmarkt: da alle Völker der Erde sich gegenseitig verkaufen und wechselweise verkauft werden, um als Eine Markt-Ware in einander Vershochzeitet zu werden’. 47 Ibid., 164–5: ‘Es ist, gemäß dem Römerbrief, Israel, das das Symbol dieses Geheimnisses ist. Gewiß erscheint dieses Israel als mit Recht gezüchtigt vom Herrn wegen seiner vielfachen Untreue, wie Isaias es schaut: Von der Fußsohle bis zum Scheitel nichts Heiles an ihm und was soll man weiter noch an euch schlagen?! O weh des sündigen Volks! (Isa 1:2–6). Aber eben in der immer neuen “apeitheia”, dem “Trotz des Unglaubens” Israels geschieht der heilvolle “Austausch” von einem eifersüchtigen Israel zu vordem ungläubigen Heiden. Israel wird “verkauft auf dem Sklavenmarkt”, daß die Welt, die unter Satan versklavt war, die Freiheit der Kinder Gottes empfange und so aus dem Tod auferstehe. Im Todes-Geheimnis trotzendungläubiger Juden wie Heiden schwingt unerhört der doppelte Austausch auf dem Sklavenmarkt: Durch ihren (Israels) Fehltritt ist Heil den Heiden daß sie ihnen nacheiferten. Wenn aber ihr Fehltritt Reichtum der Welt ist, und ihr Verlust Reichtum der Heiden, um wieviel mehr ihre Fülle! Wenn doch ihr (der Juden) Verschleudert (über die ganze Erde) Austausch für die Welt ward, was ist ihre Hinzunähme, wenn nicht Leben aus den Toten (Rom 11:11–14). Das ist der innerste Austausch. Juden wie Heiden und Judenchristen wie Heidenchristen fallen, von sich aus, immer neu in den Trotz des Unglaubens und so in die Sklaverei Satans (in allen Versklavungen der Geschichte). Aber mitten hierin hebt, von Gott aus, das “admirabile commercium”, das Wunder des Austauschs an: daß alle gegenseitig sich zum Heil werden: daß alles Verschleudert der einen durch die andern Austausch für die Welt wird, hinein in Leben aus den Toten. Denn das Geheimnis des Austausch ist das Geheimnis des Gottes, der “allesamt ein verschlüsselt hat in den Trotz des Unglaubens, um aller sich zu erbarmen” (Rom 11:32)’.

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The basic parameters for churches’ self-representation and discernment To sum up we can sustain that the synthetic vision Przywara combines: a rereading of the data of the Christian tradition with a careful reconsideration of the mystery of Israel; a rethinking of western history with also the fractures that have marked the fate of Christianity in Europe; a consideration of ecclesiological forms of the West and the underpinning political theologies;48 a development of the reflection on the analogy as the rhythm of being and knowing that flows – with a deep attention to the thought of Luther – in a theology of admirabile commercium, understood as the structural and dynamic background of creation and redemption.49 For Przywara such perspectives are necessary to rebuild ‘archaeologically’ and philosophically western history, but he is interested in them above all in order to understand the times in which the church is living. As a matter of fact, in his theology he uses the methodology which he derived from the spiritual exercises of Ignatius of Loyola: the discernment of spirit is the tool for both the understanding of one’s own times and the discerning of the responsible call contained in these times. The works and texts in which this perspective can be detected are innumerable. Here we can recall, as an example, the short text he composed, already very ill, on the eve of Vatican II. In this text using his method built around polarity – and once again devoting attention to the Protestant Reformation and the relationship with the Jews – he explicitly recalls the intention of diagnosing the times in order to get a real Unterscheidung der Geistes.50 Using Przywara’s analysis we can detect some parameters that, properly screened and studied historically and theologically, allow the churches to orient themselves performing their historical discernment in relation to their evangelical task: in fact these parameters can help Christian churches to better define their position inside the life of peoples and their institutions.51 So to properly understand Christianism and its historical task there are many factors at play: the Catholic Christianity; the Reform with the relevance of the theology of the cross; the eastern Christianity; the particular characteristics of the messiahship of Jesus with the admirabile commercium and the resulting theology of exchange; the impossibility of the church – or of a Christian civilisation – to replace Israel and 48 Cf. particularly ‘Reich und Kreuz’; ‘Vision des Reichs’; ‘Botschaft vom Reich’ in ibid., 103–18. 49 Faber, ‘Przywara Erich’, 609: ‘Commercium in enger Verbindung mit dem biblischen Hochzeitmotiv, kann geradezu als Schlüsselbegriff seiner Theologie gelten’. 50 Erich Przywara, Kirche in Gegensätzen (Düsseldorf: Patmos, 1962). 51 Erich Przywara, Christ und Obrigkeit. Ein Dialog mit Paul Schütz, Werner von Trott, Walter Warnach (Nürnberg: Glock und Lutz, 1962).

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the consequent identity of the church not as a new chosen people but as a reconciled body of Jews and non-Jews. These are five of the factors that in the analysis of Przywara’s thought – complex and sometimes impressionistic – emerge as crucial to understand Der Ruf von heute, i. e. the call of present time for the churches. In particular, we must emphasise once again that it is impossible to have the tools to accomplish this – historical, theological and spiritual – discernment regardless of an adequate ecumenical reflection and an equivalent awareness of the relationship with the Jews. This way to interpret the times has a particularly relevant meaning if one takes into account one aspect. Przywara was writing in a time of transition and momentous crisis and had a strong and dramatic awareness of this;52 likewise, we are probably reflecting on these issues in a time of transition in which a surplus of responsibility is required. Our own historical moment has at least two main aspects: the division of the churches originated from the Reformation at the beginning of modern times does not seem to further help the churches to address the problems of postmodern times properly;53 the question of the form – ecclesiological and also political – of the church seems to be of primary importance.54 This problem deeply involves its original identity not as an elective subject replacing another one – the Jews55 – but rather as a reconciled and reconciling entity and fellowship.56 52 Cf. Erich Przywara, Vier Predigten über das Abendland. ‘Siehe, Ich Mache Alles Neu’ (Einsiedeln: Johannes Verlag, 1948). We fully agree to what is written in Giuseppe Ruggieri, Della fede. La certezza, il dubbio, la lotta (Roma: Carocci, 2014), 158, n. 17: ‘Nell’ultima pagina del libro [Commercium] si ricorda che il contenuto del saggio sul commercium risale alle conferenze domenicali pomeridiane, tenute dall’autore su incarico del cardinale Michael von Faulhaber a Monaco, durante i bombardamenti del 1944–45. Le conferenze si svolsero in un percorso itinerante che, dopo la distruzione del Bürgersaal della città bavarese, conobbe varie tappe, in cinque chiese differenti, distrutte dai bombardamenti alleati l’una dopo l’altra. L’interpretazione di Przywara ha quindi come sfondo le rovine di una cultura e di un popolo accecato dalla follia nazista. Sullo sfondo di queste rovine emerge la figura del Messia che fa sua la perdizione umana’. 53 Cf. Paolo Prodi, Il paradigma tridentino. Un’epoca della storia della Chiesa (Brescia: Morcelliana, 2010); Maria T. Fattori, ‘Il paradigma tridentino e la sua transizione: nota di lettura’, Cristianesimo nella storia 33/1 (2012) 127–41. 54 Cf. Alberto Melloni, Quel che resta di Dio. Un discorso sulle forme della vita cristiana (Torino: Einaudi, 2013), 116: ‘Il filo più forte che lega la Chiesa alla tradizione di Israele appartiene alla struttura originaria d’una fede che non ha bisogno di essere totalitaria per esistere; ma anzi sperimenta nel tempo che è proprio nella sua minorità che essa vive ed è nella ribellione a questa condizione che essa trova il suo pervertimento. Tant’è che, non appena il cristianesimo è diventato fede di Stato nel IV secolo, subito qualche credente ha iniziato a sentire che in ciò che il potere concedeva si nascondeva la più micidiale persecuzione […]’. 55 Cf. Jorge M. Bergoglio/Abraham Skorka, Il cielo e la terra. Il pensiero di Papa Francesco sulla

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Following the complex and insightful reflection of Przywara makes it possible to recover some fundamental issues and concepts that might be of great theoretical and practical help in our time when European churches and especially – I write as a Catholic theologian – the Catholic Church, even under the ‘pressure’ of multifaceted impulses of Pope Francis, who is a careful Przywara reader,57 senses the call to a deep historical, ecumenical and theological renovation.

Bibliography Albarello, Duilio, ‘L’abisso originario dell’analogia. La proporzione eccedente dell’umano e del divino in Erich Przywara’, in Sequeri, Pier A./Ubbiali, Sergio (ed.), Nominare Dio invano? Orizzonti per la teologia filosofica (Milano: Glossa, 2009) 153–78. Avogadri, Claudio, Erich Przywara. Sull’uomo, sul mondo e su Dio (Assisi: Cittadella, 2016). Balthasar, Hans U. von, Karl Barth. Darstellung und Deutung Seiner Theologie (Einsiedeln: Johannes Verlag, 1976). Bergoglio, Jorge M./Skorka, Abraham, Il cielo e la terra. Il pensiero di Papa Francesco sulla famiglia, la fede e la missione della Chiesa nel XXI secolo (Milano: Mondadori, 2013). Bonhoeffer, Dietrich, Atto ed essere. Filosofia trascendentale ed ontologia nella teologia sistematica, edited by Gallas, Alberto (Brescia: Queriniana, 1993).

famiglia, la fede e la missione della Chiesa nel XXI secolo (Milano: Mondadori, 2013), 170: ‘Dio si manifesta a tutti gli uomini e riscatta per primo il popolo depositario delle promesse. E siccome Dio è fedele alle sue promesse, non viene rifiutato. La Chiesa riconosce ufficialmente che il popolo di Israele continua ad essere il depositario delle promesse. Non dice mai: “Avete perso la partita, ora tocca a noi”. È un modo per riconoscere il popolo di Israele. Penso sia la cosa più coraggiosa del Concilio Vaticano II su questo tema’; cf. also Antonio Spadaro, ‘Il Papa, il rabbino, la Terra Santa. Intervista ad Abraham Skorka’, La Civiltà Cattolica 3934 (2014) 359–93. 56 Cf. Piero Stefani, ‘La relazione col popolo ebraico. Una priorità cinquant’anni dopo Paolo VI e il Concilio’, Il Regno – Attualità 8 (2014) 218–19. 57 Cf. Pope Francis, Address at his conferral of the Charlemagne Prize, Vatican City, Sala Regia, 6 May 2016: ‘The capacity to integrate. Erich Przywara, in his splendid work Idee Europa [The Idea of Europe], challenges us to think of the city as a place where various instances and levels coexist. He was familiar with the reductionist tendency inherent in every attempt to rethink the social fabric. Many of our cities are remarkably beautiful precisely because they have managed to preserve over time traces of different ages, nations, styles and visions. We need but look at the inestimable cultural patrimony of Rome to realize that the richness and worth of a people is grounded in its ability to combine all these levels in a healthy coexistence. Forms of reductionism and attempts at uniformity, far from generating value, condemn our peoples to a cruel poverty: the poverty of exclusion. Far from bestowing grandeur, riches and beauty, exclusion leads to vulgarity, narrowness, and cruelty. Far from bestowing nobility of spirit, it brings meanness. The roots of our peoples, the roots of Europe, were consolidated down the centuries by the constant need to integrate in new syntheses the most varied and discrete cultures. The identity of Europe is, and always has been, a dynamic and multicultural identity’.

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Dunkle, Brian P., ‘Service in the “Analogia Entis” and Spiritual Works of Erich Przywara’, Theological Studies 73 (2012) 339–62. Ederer, Martin F., ‘Propaganda Wars: “Stimmen der Zeit” and the Nazis, 1933–1935’, The Catholic Historical Review 90/3 (2004) 456–72. Faber, Eva-Maria, ‘Skandal und Torheit. Die Katholische Kreuzestheologie Erich Przywaras. Zum 450. Todestag von Martin Luther’, Geist und Leben 69 (1996) 338–53. Faber, Eva-Maria, ‘Przywara Erich’, Theologische Realenzyklopädie 28 (1997) 607–10. Faber, Eva-Maria, ‘Commercium’, in Lexikon für Theologie und Kirche (11 vols.; Freiburg i.B.: Herder, 2006) vol. 2, 1274–5. Fattori, Maria T., ‘Il paradigma tridentino e la sua transizione: nota di lettura’, Cristianesimo nella storia 33/1 (2012) 127–41. Ferrario, Fulvio, Bonhoeffer (Roma: Carocci, 2014). Gallas, Alberto, ‘L’antinomia atto-essere tra filosofia e teologia. Analisi dell’opera Akt und Sein di Dietrich Bonhoeffer’, in Gallas, Alberto, Non santi ma uomini. Studi bonhoefferiani (Torino: Claudiana, 2008) 39–97. Heer, Friedrich, The Holy Roman Empire (Sheffield: Phoenix Press, 2002). Jüngel, Eberhard, Gott als Geheimnis der Welt. Zur Begründung der Theologie des Gekreuzigten im Streit zwischen Theismus und Atheismus (Tübingen: J.C.B. Mohr, 1978). Lagger, Christian, Dienst. Kenosis in Schöpfung und Kreuz bei Erich Przywara SJ (Innsbruck: Tyrolia-Verlag, 2007). Mandreoli, Fabrizio, ‘L’idea d’Europa di Erich Przywara: una riflessione critica per l’ora attuale’, Rivista di Teologia dell’Evangelizzazione 18 (2014) 187–221. Marschler, Thomas, ‘Analogia Fidei. Anmerkungen zu einem Grundprinzip Theologischer Schriftermeneutik’, Theologie und Philosophie 87 (2012) 208–36. Melloni, Alberto, Quel che resta di Dio. Un discorso sulle forme della vita cristiana (Torino: Einaudi, 2013). Müller, Gerhard L., ‘Analogie’, in Lexikon für Theologie und Kirche (11 vols.; Freiburg i.B.: Herder, 2006) vol. 1, 581–2. Narvaja, José L., ‘La crisi di ogni politica cristiana. Erich Przywara e l’idea d’Europa’, La Civiltà Cattolica 3977 (2016) 437–48. Nielsen, Niels C., Jr., ‘The Debate Between Karl Barth and Erich Przywara: A New Evaluation of Protestant and Roman Catholic Differences’, Rice University Studies 40 (1953) 24–46. O’Malley, John W., Quattro culture dell’Occidente (Milano: Vita e Pensiero, 2007). O’Meara, Thomas F., Erich Przywara, S.J.: His Theology and His World (Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame, 2002). Podestà, Gian L., L’ultimo Messia. Profezia e sovranità nel Medioevo (Bologna: Il Mulino, 2014). Prodi, Paolo, Il paradigma tridentino. Un’epoca della storia della Chiesa (Brescia: Morcelliana, 2010). Przywara, Erich, Das Geheimnis Kierkegaards (München/Berlin: R. Oldenbourg, 1929). Przywara, Erich, ‘Nation, Staat, Kirche’, Stimmen der Zeit 125 (1933) 374–5. Przywara, Erich, ‘Luther konsequent’, Scholastik 12 (1937) 386–92. Przywara, Erich, Vier Predigten über das Abendland. ‘Siehe, Ich Mache Alles Neu’ (Einsiedeln: Johannes Verlag, 1948). Przywara, Erich, Christentum gemäß Johannes (Nürnberg: Glock und Lutz, 1954).

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Przywara, Erich, Idee Europa (Nürnberg: Glock und Lutz, 1955). Przywara, Erich/Sauer, Hermann, Gespräch zwischen den Kirchen. Das Grundsätzliche (Nürnberg: Glock und Lutz, 1956). Przywara, Erich, ‘Vorwort’, in Przywara, Erich/Sauer, Hermann, Gespräch zwischen den Kirchen. Das Grundsätzliche (Nürnberg: Glock und Lutz, 1956) 7–9. Przywara, Erich, Christ und Obrigkeit. Ein Dialog mit Paul Schütz, Werner von Trott, Walter Warnach (Nürnberg: Glock und Lutz, 1962). Przywara, Erich, Kirche in Gegensätzen (Düsseldorf: Patmos, 1962). Przywara, Erich, Logos, Abendmahl, Reich, Commercium (Düsseldorf: Patmos, 1964). Przywara, Erich, Katholische Krise (Düsseldorf: Patmos, 1967). Przywara, Erich, L’idea d’Europa. La ‘crisi’ di ogni politica ‘cristiana’, edited by Mandreoli, Fabrizio/Narvaja, José L. (Trapani: Il Pozzo di Giacobbe, 2013). Przywara, Erich, En torno a una idea de Europa, edited by Mandreoli, Fabrizio/Narvaja, José L. (Buenos Aires: Instituto Thomas Falkner, 2015). Rosenberg, Alfred, Der Mythus des 20. Jahrhunderts (München: Hoheneichen, 1931). Ruggieri, Giuseppe, Della fede. La certezza, il dubbio, la lotta (Roma: Carocci, 2014). Sequeri, Pier A., ‘Analogia’, in Dizionario Teologico Interdisciplinare (3 vols.; Torino: Marietti, 1977) vol. 1, 341–51. Spadaro, Antonio, ‘Il Papa, il rabbino, la Terra Santa. Intervista ad Abraham Skorka’, La Civiltà Cattolica 3934 (2014) 359–93. Stefani, Piero, ‘La relazione col popolo ebraico. Una priorità cinquant’anni dopo Paolo VI e il Concilio’, Il Regno – Attualità 8 (2014) 218–19. Zechmeister, Martha, ‘Przywara E.’, in Lexikon für Theologie und Kirche (11 vols.; Freiburg i.B.: Herder, 2006) vol. 8, 688–9.

Fabio Todesco

Figura, allegory, and the role of the Reformation in Erich Auerbach’s historical perspectivism1

Erich Auerbach and a new old question Does Christianity necessarily generate supersessionism, i. e. a ‘replacement theology’?2 This is a more recent and formal way of raising an older question: is Christianity – not only because of its long history, where the claim to be the ‘new Israel’ has very often been repeated, but, more specifically, by reason of its internal structure – necessarily anti-Jewish? One example could be the case of the Boers in South Africa.3 Nowadays it is quite easy to demonstrate that Calvinism was not the necessary cause of a ‘feeling of being the object of election’ generating an ‘apartness’, which produced what has been called ‘apartheid’. Nevertheless, connecting extreme, radical phenomena (such as apartheid and racism) to their historical (sometimes hidden, or at least unconscious) roots may allow us to throw some light upon crucial, long-lasting phenomena. In fact, that feeling of being the object of election, moulded on biblical Israel, shaped almost each and every nation-building – whether Christian or secularised –, and Christianity proved in too many cases to work as a religious reinforcement of the idea that ‘it is good to die for [our] Fatherland’.4 In the following pages I shall try to highlight 1 I owe a great debt of gratitude to my colleagues of the Ecclesia-Israel group (FTER, Bologna) on the ‘Self-Representation and Reality: “Verus Israel” and the Reformation’s Legacy’ panel of the Fourth RefoRC Conference, Fondazione per le scienze religiose Giovanni XXIII, Bologna, 15– 17 May 2014, Fabrizio Mandreoli and Fabio Ruggiero, and especially to Gian Domenico Cova. 2 ‘The most common designation used in recent scholarly literature to identify […] the view that the church has permanently replaced Israel in God’s plan’ (Michael Vlach, ‘Defining Supersessionism’, August 2011, available at https://web.archive.org/web/20160309232828/http:// www.theologicalstudies.org/resource-library/supersessionism/324-defining-supersessionism [1. 10. 2018]). 3 This and the following passage refer to the contribution of Fabio Ruggiero presented at the aforementioned Fourth RefoRC Conference panel, ‘A Case for a Christian Supersessionism: The Afrikaners and the Calvinistic Interpretation of South African Theology’. 4 Enzo Bianchi, Ricominciare. Nell’anima, nella chiesa, nel mondo (Casale Monferrato: Marietti, 1991), 89. This very same point is noted in Karl-Heinz Barck/Martin Treml, ‘Einleitung: Erich Auerbachs Philologie als Kulturwissenschaft’, in Barck, Karl-Heinz/Treml, Martin (ed.), Erich

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what should be considered a crucial component of the ‘assuming oneself as Israel’s elected’, that is, the relation between Israel’s biblical narrative and one’s own (singular or collective) history. This component is the notion of figura (‘figural representation’), considered in its direct opposition to allegory, as it has been theorised by Erich Auerbach’s (1892–1957) most influential work. A distinguished German-Jewish scholar and a literary critic, Auerbach offered throughout his writings a picture of the development of the European culture starting from its Greek (and biblical) roots; he wrote a major part of his masterpiece Mimesis,5 ‘by far the largest in scope and ambition out of all the other important critical works of the past half century’,6 during his exile in Istanbul from Nazi Germany. The driving force of that development was the concept of ‘figural representation’ which he explained as follows: a thing on earth [a1] is related to another thing on earth [a2], by a formally heterogeneous third entity (a divine plan, or project) which is not a thing, neither is it set on earth, but which expresses the truth of both things [b], and can be perceived, and thus appear in its truth, only through their mediation.7 Or, paraphrasing Aby Warburg: God (=[b], Auerbach. Geschichte und Aktualität eines europäischen Philologen (Berlin: Kadmos, 2007) 9– 29, on 28. 5 German edition: Erich Auerbach, Mimesis. Dargestellte Wirklichkeit in der Abenländischen Literatur. Eine Geschichte des abendländischen Realismus als Ausdruck der Wandlungen in der Selbst-anschauung des Menschen (Bern: A. Francke, 1946) [= G]; English edition: Erich Auerbach, Mimesis. The Representation of Reality in Western Literature (Princeton/Oxford: Princeton University Press, 2013) [= E]; Italian edition: Erich Auerbach, Mimesis. Il realismo nella letteratura occidentale (2 vols.; Torino: Einaudi, 1956) [= It 1–2]. Mimesis had been preceded by the essay ‘Figura’, Archivum Romanicum 22 (1938) 436–89 [= D], then reprinted in Auerbach, Erich, Neue Dantestudien (Istanbul, 1944) 11–71 [= Fg]; in English, only posthumous, Figura (New York: Meridian Books, 1959); in Italian ‘Figura’, in Auerbach, Erich, Studi su Dante, edited by Della Terza, Dante (Milano: Feltrinelli, 2012) 176–226 [= Fi]. Edward W. Said describes Mimesis as the effort ‘to represent an alternative history for Europe’ faced with ‘the downfall of Europe, and of Germany in particular’, see Edward W. Said, ‘Introduction’, in E, ix–xxxii, on xxxi; about Said’s reading of Mimesis see Barck/Treml, ‘Einleitung’, 16–19; Jane O. Newman, ‘Nicht am “falschen Ort”: Saids, Auerbach und die “neue” Komparatistik’, in Barck/Treml (ed.), Erich Auerbach, 341–56. 6 Said, ‘Introduction’, ix. 7 E, 555: ‘[…] an occurrence on earth signifies not only itself but at the same time another, which it predicts or confirms, without prejudice to the power of its concrete reality here and now. The connection between occurrences is not regarded as primarily a chronological or causal development but as a oneness within the divine plan, of which all occurrences are part and reflections’; cf. G, 495–6: ‘[…] ein auf Erden geschehender Vorgang bedeutet, unbeschadet seiner konkreten Wirklichkeitskraft hier und jetzt, zugleich auch einen anderen, der Zusammenhang zwischen Vorgängen wird nicht vorwiegend als zeitliche oder kausale Entwicklung angesehen, sondern als Einheit innerhalb des göttlichen Planes, dessen Glieder und Spiegelungen alle Vorgänge sind’: the definition comes from the last chapter of Mimesis (cf. It 2, 340–1). See also Fi, 209 = Fg, 47: ‘sie [the occurrences] sind beide […] in dem fliessenden Strom enthalten, welcher das geschichtliche Leben ist, und nur das Verständnis, der intellectus spiritualis, ist ein geistiger Akt’. The passage is quoted in the first part of Mimesis with a small

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in our scheme) dwells in the details (=[a1]; [a2]). Figural representation is ternary as is Hegelian dialectics,8 and yet entails a transcendent, and thus not mundane, divine element:9 which for human beings implies, perhaps surprisingly, a freedom, or an independence, from every other immanent, or rather, ‘mundane’ power, or force. As Auerbach wrote in a short essay in 1919, no mundane hierarchy (such as that of overhuman, although still earthly and created forces, as are pagan divinities) can impede (the divine, absolutely powerful) ‘destiny’s’ revealing itself through the (earthly,10 poor, limited, fully human) ‘characters’: ‘Schicksal und Charakter sind eines’.11 Not being a symbol,12 figura is the last, ultimate, divine truth of a historical fact – although at the same time it

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insertion (here in italics): ‘und nur das Verständnis, der intellectus spiritualis, ihres Zusammenhangs ist ein geistiger Akt’ (G, 77; E, 73; It 1, 83). Auerbach had found in Hegel’s Lessons on Aesthetics ‘einer der schönsten Seiten, die je über Dante geschrieben wurden’ (G, 185; It 1, 207) and acknowledged that Hegel had been the stimulus for his research on Dante’s realism: ‘Diese Gedanken finden sich auf der Seite Hegels, die ich oben erwähnte, und ich habe sie zur Grundlage einer Untersuchung über Dantes Realismus gemacht, die ich vor 15 Jahren veröffentlichte (Dante als Dichter der irdischen Welt)’ (G, 188; It 1, 210). Furthermore, as Said points out, in the ‘Epilegomena zu Mimesis’ Auerbach ‘affirmed that his work […] would be conceivable in no other tradition than in that of German romanticism and Hegel’ (Said, ‘Introduction’, xii). Could Auerbach, who highly praised Hegel, maintain himself free from his historical justificationism? I try to demonstrate he could. History and human experience may reveal itself, and can only be understood, through a divine (i. e. not historical, not chronological, not causal), underlying, point of view, which is the whole truth. On the biblical bases of the figural interpretation cf. Fi, 206n; Fg, 43n, 44n. This connection between a divine and a human level, which is not causal, is exemplified, if I dare to say, by the biblical expression hinne-ni (Heb.) / ecce (Lat.), so characteristic of the new biblical perspective (E, 9; cf. It 1, 9; G, 13): ‘das hebräische Wort bedeutet nur etwa: “siehe mich”, oder, wie Gunkel übersetzt: “ich höre”’. Auerbach himself describes the reaction of Montaigne’s readers to his Essais in a similar way when he writes that Montaigne did not write for abstract categories: ‘for the people’ (‘für “das Volk”’), ‘not for a party’ (‘für keine Partei’); he just wrote an introspection of himself and not of others, ‘and lo!, [und siehe da] there were people – men and women – who felt that they were spoken to’ (E, 308; G, 292; cf. It 2, 58); incidentally, this opposition between ‘Volk, Partei’ and (single) ‘Menschen, Männer und Frauen die sich als Adressaten empfanden’ (G, ibid.) may reflect Auerbach’s position towards the role of these words within Nazi culture. See also: ‘[…] of Abraham too nothing is made perceptible except the words in which he answers God: Hinne-ni, Behold me here [Hinne-ni, hier siehe mich]’ (E, 9; G, 13; cf. It 1, 10). Said observes that ‘the crucial word irdischen, or “earthly”, was only partially rendered by the considerably less concrete “secular”’ (Said, ‘Introduction’, xi). Erich Auerbach, ‘Zur Dante-Feier’, in Barck/Treml (ed.), Erich Auerbach, 407–9, on 408. The expression in italics translates a fragment of Heraclitus that Auerbach quoted also in D; cf. Fi in Italian and, in English, Erich Auerbach, Dante Poet of the Secular World (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1961). On Warburg and Benjamin, see later. Fg, 51: ‘Dem Symbol wohnt notwendig magische Kraft inne, der figura nicht; diese hingegen muss stets geschichtlich sein, das Symbol aber nicht. Selbstverständlich fehlt es auch dem Christentum nicht an magischen Symbolen; doch die figura als solche gehört nicht zu ihnen’.

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is, as a mere fact, something material and concrete.13 A crucial point is that the second occurrence of a figura is also a promise, not a fulfilment: which will come only at the end of time. Thus it cannot be considered the result of a (causal) development of its first occurrence.14

Figura as a new old word Is, then, figura, as a Christian tool, a supersessionistic conception?15 If the people of Israel are the foreshadowers and another people the fulfilment, does Israel still have the right to exist after the fulfilment? Does the figural conception leave to the 13 It is perhaps significant that Auerbach prizes Lucretius who gave to the Greek equivalent of figura, schema, the (earthly, concrete) ‘materialistic’ value of ‘atom’: Fi, 180–1 = Fg, 15, 15n. See also Fi, 191: ‘esso [l’Antico Testamento] ha sempre un senso letterale reale’ (italics ours). The same – a bit surprisingly – happens for Augustine (Fi, 198) and Tertullianus (Fi, 193 = Fg, 28): ‘figura ist etwas Wirkliches, Geschichtliches, welches etwas anderes, ebenfalls Wirkliches und Geschichtliches darstellt und ankündigt. […] so sagt Tertullian etwa adv. Marc. 5, 7: Quare Pascha Christus, si non Pascha figura Christi per similitudinem sanguinis salutaris et pecoris Christi?’. See also Fg, 29: ‘Der energische Realismus Tertullianus ist auch sonst bekannt’; in the same page he quotes the passage (Adv. Marc. 4, 40): ‘Corpus illum suum fecit “hoc est corpus meum” dicendo: “id est figura corporis mei”. Figura autem non fuisset, nisi veritatis esser corpus. Ceterum vacua res, quod est phantasma, figuram capere non posset’. 14 Cf. Fi, 200 = Fg, 32: ‘Und so tritt figura mehrfach in dem Sinne “tiefere Bedeutung in Bezug auf zukünftiges” auf […] Von dieser Gesinnung ist auch eine Eschatologie beherrscht’. 15 That figura is not simply supersessionistic is the position of John D. Dawson in his Christian Figural Reading and the Fashioning of Identity (Berkeley/Los Angeles: University of California Press, 2001), 163, when he speaks about ‘supersession’ of ‘figure’ by ‘fulfillment’ only in the sense that ‘the more one speaks about the supersession of figure by fulfillment, the more one must speak about the irreducible identity of the figure’. Dawson goes on to counter Timothy Bahti’s chapter on Auerbach in his Allegories of History (Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1992), 144, when he claims that the fulfilment makes the figure ‘less than true’, in the sense that only the fulfilment reveals its true figurative meaning, or fulfils it: ‘amazingly enough, the figure already possesses the truth, a truth which has not even “arrived” in its own historical reality’; according to him, Bahti’s ‘formulation reverses the clear intent of Auerbach’s claim’, since it ‘denies that the truth has become history or flesh’; besides this, ‘Bahti’s anti-incarnational stance echoes that of his mentor Paul de Man […] where he aligns his conception of allegory with deconstruction’. Said, in a somewhat postmodern way, concludes his ‘Introduction’ observing that ‘Auerbach offers no system’ (should we understand that he offers no consistent theory?): ‘It is as if Auerbach was intent on exposing his personal explorations and, perforce, his fallibility to the perhaps scornful eye of critics who might deride his subjectivity’ and ‘something impossibly naïve, if not outrageous, that hotly contested terms like “Western”, “reality”, and “representation” […] are left to stand on their own, unadorned and unqualified’ (Said, ‘Introduction’, xxxii). In the same direction as Bahti’s argumentation seems to go, see Said’s use of the term figura when he observes that ‘pre-Christian times can be read as a shadowy figure (figura) of what actually was to come’ (ibid., xxi). It is true that Said is here quoting Auerbach’s words where he says that Paul wanted ‘das Alte Testament seines normativen Charakters zu entkleiden und als blossen Schatten des Kommenden aufzufassen’ (Fg, 44, italics ours = ‘spogliare l’Antico Testamento

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Bible its literary sense?16 Moreover, since Auerbach continued to make references to figura not only before but also after the Shoah, was he aware of the destruction that a certain application of the concept of figura could, at least at a first glance, represent for the existence of Judaism on earth? Hence we return to our first question: is Christianity necessarily supersessionistic? Without using this term, Carlo Ginzburg17 clearly raised the question in a seminal essay of 1997,18 and in a more recent essay on Auerbach. It is well known how Auerbach countered, from the very first chapter of Mimesis, the Homeric style (considered ‘bad’) being so ‘simple’ in spite of the refined development of its language,19 to the (much more human, therefore, seen as ‘good’) ‘biblical stories’20 which bear a ‘second meaning’21 suggested ‘by the silence’ of the text ‘and the fragmentary speeches’.22 For him only a biblical narrative, and not Homer, could stimulate in the reader a ‘subjectivistic-perspectivistic procedure’.23 However he also countered the writing of history (seen as good) to the (considered bad) writing of legends (‘Sagen’ is redefined within the book as a synonym for ‘propaganda’).24 He then countered the contamination

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del suo carattere normativo e [di] concepirlo come mera ombra del futuro’, Fi, 207); but it should be also noted that ‘shadow’ remains, in its meaning, totally opposite to ‘allegory’: an earthly shadow, one could say – but not a Schwarmerei, a fantasy –, of a concrete actual event that has to come. According to Dawson, Christian Figural Reading, 209–10, ‘[i]n contrast to Boyarin, Auerbach […] think[s] that Christian figural reading need not undermine the Bible’s literal sense. […] For Auerbach, the key strategy for avoiding the figurative temptations of figural reading can be distilled in the phrase “figural relation”. […] when figural meaning becomes “independent” and captures attention for itself, directing the reader away from figure or fulfillment or their interrelationship, then a subversive, figurative tension gains a foothold, and allegory emerges, ready to undermine the historical reality of the figure’. Carlo Ginzburg, ‘Ecce. Sulle radici scritturali dell’immagine di culto cristiana’, in Ginzburg, Carlo, Occhiacci di legno (Milano: Feltrinelli, 1998) 100–17; Carlo Ginzburg, ‘Auerbach und Dante: Eine Verlaufbahn’, in Barck/Treml (ed.), Erich Auerbach, 33–45. Where he also mentioned Auerbach’s ‘pagine indimenticabili di Mimesis’ about the gospels (Ginzburg, ‘Ecce’, 116). On this point see also G, 12–16; and Said, ‘Introduction’, xxiii. Of its ‘syntactical culture’ (‘syntaktische Kultur’): E, 13; G 18; It 1, 15. E, 14; G, 18; It 1, 16: ‘den biblischen Geschichten’. E, 15; G, 20; It 1, 17: ‘zweiten, verborgenen Sinn’. E, 11; G, 16; It 1, 13: ‘aus dem Schweigen und fragmentarischen Reden suggeriert’. E, 7; G, 11–12: ‘solch subjektivistisch-perspektivistisches Verfahren, welches Vordergrund und Hintergrund schafft, so daß die Gegenwart sich nach der Vergangenheitstiefe öffnet’; cf. It 1, 8: ‘questo dar le cose soggettivamente e in prospettiva, creando il primo piano e lo sfondo, sicché il presente si apra verso il passato’. E, 19–20; G, 25; It 1, 23–4: ‘The historical event [das Geschichtliche] […] runs […] variously, contradictorily, and confusedly’, while ‘Legend [die Sage] […] knows only clearly outlined men who act from few and simple motives [kennt nur eindeutig festgelegte, von wenigen, einfachen Motiven bestimmte Menschen] […] the slogans [die Schlagworte] of propaganda can be composed only [zustande kommen] through the crudest simplification – with the result that friend and foe [Freund und Feind] alike can often employ the same ones. To write

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(seen as good) of literary styles to their (bad) separation; and, most significantly of all, the figura (good; generally seen, before him, as a very broad rhetorical device which included allegory) to the (bad) ‘allegory’ (which he considered to be totally symbolic, far from an effective reality, dangerous, and which he accurately separated from figura). The result was a conceptual tool whereby the positive element may be seen as a remedy, or a positive alternative, to the other. The ‘other’ element, it could be said in a rather crude way, after a long line of precursors, was clearly exemplified by Nazi Germany. ‘Legend’, ‘propaganda’, ‘separation’, ‘allegory’: is it too bold to assume that in his book Auerbach tried to oppose, through a strong cultural construction, Nazi culture,25 and to formulate a diagnosis of (and perhaps a remedy to) what might well appear to be the self-destruction of European culture26 in his time, thus redefining in a new way old and noble terms sharing an uncertain semantic boundary27 (figura, allegory) of the scholarly instrumentarium? Could he avoid, when talking about Trennung and Mischung as the styles within literature, to recall the themes of ‘separation’ and ‘contamination’ of races within the politics history is so difficult that most historians [Geschichtsschreiber] are forced to make concessions to the technique of legend [Konzessionen an die Sagentechnik]’. He openly criticised, while dealing with the prose of Voltaire, a favourite propaganda technique of his time (‘eine beliebte Propagandatechnik’) (E, 404; G, 356; It 2, 165): ‘It may be called the searchlight device [die Scheinwerfertechnik], […] overilluminating [überbeleuchtet] one small part […] for what is said cannot be denied; and yet everything is falsified [alles verfälscht ist], for truth requires the whole truth and the proper interrelation of its elements [zur Wahrheit die ganze Wahrheit und das richtige Verhältnis ihrer Teile gehört]. Especially in times of excited passions [in erregten Zeiten], the public is again and again taken in by such tricks [Tricks], and everybody knows more than enough examples from the very recent past’. 25 Said only affirms that ‘Auerbach circumspectly alludes [to National Socialism] in Mimesis several times’ (Said, ‘Introduction’, xv): and that Chapter 17 of Mimesis contained a severe judgement about the eighteenth-century ‘profound wrong turn in German culture as a whole that led to the horrors of the present’ (ibid., xxix). This aim of Auerbach’s method has been underlined by Diane Meur, ‘Auerbach und Vico: Die unausgesprochene Auseinandersetzung’, in Barck/Treml (ed.), Erich Auerbach, 57–71. Barck and Treml speak of a ‘Politische Philologie’ (in analogy with the concept of ‘Political Theology’) and of a ‘nicht nationalgeschichtlich konzipierten europäischen Literaturgeschichte’ (Barck/Treml, ‘Einleitung’, 11, 16). About Auerbach’s political theology (compared with Taubes’s) see in the same volume Richard Faber, ‘Humilitas sive sublimitas. Erich Auerbachs Literatursoziologie im Kontext modernen Marcionismus’, in Barck/Treml (ed.), Erich Auerbach, 323–40. 26 Said (‘Introduction’, xvi, x) recalls (but in a more restricted sense) the fact that Auerbach ‘was a man with a mission, a European (and Eurocentric) mission it is true, but something he deeply believed in for its emphasis on the unity of human history’: ‘a combination of quiet erudition allied with an overridingly patient and loving confidence in his mission of scholar and philologist’. 27 ‘Die aus dem Griechischen übernommenen Ausdrücke allegoria […] bedeutet allgemein jede tiefere Bedeutung, nicht nur die Realprophetie, doch ist die Grenze fliessend’ (Fg, 41). It is very important to note that, for Dante, the ‘allegorical’ meaning was what Auerbach called ‘figural’, see Dante Della Terza’s ‘Introduzione’ to Auerbach, Studi su Dante, xiv.

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of his time? A distinguished German-Jewish scholar, Auerbach could feel himself engaged in a battle against time, and against the outcome of his time: that is, the appropriation by an outcome of European culture – Nazi Germany – of the fate of that extraordinary keen German knowledge and tradition, and of the whole European tradition, totally reinterpreted (politically, culturally, religiously) into a new propagandistic (in Auerbach’s terms: allegorical) way. The new point Auerbach offered, by relying on the extensive resources of his profound knowledge, was that the cultural reality of his time could be interpreted as a (last) rebirth of the ancient allegorical (i. e. not figural) tradition, so that the figural tradition could be proposed as an antidote to it. By taking advantage of his extraordinary mastery of the European tradition, he could conclude, or at least suggest, that the present outcome of European history was not one necessarily written in its premises. It is important to add that this was effected without denying the basic goodness of a – let’s say – progressive, or evolutionary, development of the European tradition: in close consonance with Panofsky, Cassirer, Warburg, Benjamin28 and others, he attempted to decipher in a nondestructive way the profound, irrational forces which move human characters and entire populations, and which in themselves are neither necessarily good nor bad. Paraphrasing what he wrote of Montaigne and of the Duke of Saint-Simon, his aim was ‘to penetrate into the profondeurs opaques of our nature’29 (the nature of human, not overhuman, beings) while at the same time ‘transcending [in the sense of escaping, avoiding] moralism’ (a term which bears for him a negative meaning).30 In this battle he cannot have felt alone: the chapters of Mimesis contain a gallery of companions chosen to represent, as a whole, the best part of the European tradition, partners engaged in (and sometimes overwhelmed by) the same research. The most paradigmatic of them was perhaps Stendhal, ‘a man of keen intelligence, […] mentally independent and courageous, but not quite a great figure. His ideas are often forceful and inspired, but they are erratic, […] lacking in inward certainty and continuity’; a man who wisely ‘offered himself to 28 Barck/Treml, ‘Einleitung’, 23. 29 ‘Unseres Wesens hineintauchende’ (E, 309; G, 295; It 2, 59). 30 E, 431; G, 378: ‘über das nur moralistiche noch hinausgehende […] Menschendarstellung’; cf. It 2, 194, which bears an unclear ‘sormontando la pura moralistica’ (italics ours); in the essay ‘Figura’ he is even more explicit: cf. Fg, 38, 50–1 = Fi, 211–12: ‘ganz ähnlich in unseren modernen Kulturen Überreste davon weiterbestehen […] freilich schaffen sich, was sich sowohl in der Spätantike als auch gegenwärtig gezeigt hat, neue allgemein gültige Inhalte immer wieder Symbole mit realistisch-magischer Kraft’, where he points out that during the late antiquity, as is also today the case, new symbols with a magic force were created; magic forces which seemed to have been weakened throughout history and transforming, or merely disguising, themselves in allegories (‘sie hatten meist ihre magische Kraft verloren und waren zu Allegorien abgeschwächt’, ibid.); allegories which could be understood only within a small circle of initiates.

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the moment’, so that ‘circumstances seized him […] and laid upon him a unique and unexpected destiny […] so that he was compelled to come to terms with reality in a way which no one had done before him’.31 Could the German scholar, the exiled man, avoid thinking about himself with regards to all this? With these premises, it may seem puzzling that Auerbach’s great fresco devotes only a very few lines to the Reformation. It is true that his method was only per exempla; but his talent could certainly have produced an extraordinary chapter on the influence of Luther’s and the King James’s Bible translations on the development of ‘realism’ in many European languages. On the other hand, he explicitly stated that ‘the Reformation movement’ had been by no means ‘less powerful’ than ‘the French Revolution’,32 since it had had the force to break the (hierarchical and in this sense, as we noted above, ‘bad’) medieval christianitas, differentiating churches and people. But it also provoked, as a reaction, the resurgence of the (hierarchical, thus again ‘bad’) ancient world conveyed through the mediation of humanism. The old, hierarchical separation of styles, rediscovered during French classicism,33 thus ought to be seen as the Reformation’s backlash: a literary counterpart of the absolutist political theory of a well stratified society, which accurately divided men according to their proximity to the sovereign. It was a backlash with unintended consequences: ‘We know how great was the power of the classical French style throughout all Europe’,34 concluded Auerbach resignedly. It was thus left to the predominant successor of the Reformation, the French Revolution, to ‘abrog[ate] or render powerless the entire [hierarchical] social structure of orders and categories’ but also to provoke ‘intense concomitant crises’ (‘Anpassungskrisen, Adaptationskrisen’): a ‘good’ phenomenon, although hard to experience and open in turn to other backlashes.35 At the end of his book, Auerbach added that these crises could generate, as an unintended consequence, or a false answer, a ‘strong factionalism’ (a ‘bad’ phenomenon: the backlash to the development) which ‘crystal[lised] around

31 E, 459; G, 405; It 2, 226: ‘die Umstände ergriffen ihm, warfen ihn umher […] eigentümliches, unerwartetes Geschick auf […] er gezwungen war, sich mit der Wirklichkeit auf eine Weise auseinanderzusetzen, wie niemand zuvor’ (italics ours): a disenchanted description – we could add – of Auerbach’s personal experience and a paraphrase of the title of Mimesis. 32 E, 458; G, 404; It 2, 225: ‘der nicht minder gewaltigen und die Massen aufwühlenden Bewegung der Reformation’. 33 ‘The barriers [die Schranken] which the romanticists and contemporary realists tore down had been erected [for the first time] only toward the end of the sixteenth century […] by the advocates [Anhänger] of a rigorous imitation [strenger Nachahmung] of antique literature’ (E, 554; G, 495; It 2, 340). 34 E, 394; G, 348; It 2, 154: ‘Man weiß, wie groß die Macht des klassischen französischen Stils in ganz Europa gewesen ist’. 35 E, 459; It 2, 225; G, 404: ‘erschüttert oder entkräftet alle Ordnungen und Einteilungen des Lebens, die bis dahin galten […] gewaltige Anpassungskrisen’.

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important poets,36 philosophers, and scholars, but in the majority of cases pseudo-scientific, syncretistic, and primitive’.37 Although open to hard backlashes, the European development had been in general positive, in the sense that it had brought men towards the effective reality of their own personal experiences, and freed them from rigid hierarchic powers.38 In this way, Auerbach the scholar could still feel himself belonging to the living, to the best part of European tradition during the 30s; and figura was the inner driving force of the European development against its ever resurgent, hierarchical, allegorical, and perhaps unconscious, tendencies. Was this theory the result of a subtle violence perpetrated on these two words, figura and allegory? When did figura start to become a Christian tool?

Allegory and the pagan world For strange as it may seem to our well established habit of distinguishing ‘Athens’ from ‘Jerusalem’,39 i. e. ‘reason’ from ‘religion’ (a habit which is recent and probably not as true as it may appear), the whole process of the (positive, JewishChristian)40 European development had begun with a Greek (in biblical terms, 36 Perhaps another allusion to his time, and to the puzzling ambiguity of Stefan George’s circle? 37 G, 490: ‘an allen Ecken und Enden der Erde entstanden Adaptationskrisen […] Erschütterungen, die wir nicht überstanden haben’. See also E, 550; It 2, 335; G, 491: ‘wuchs die Sektenbildung, zuweilen sich um bedeutende Dichter, Philosophen und Gelehrte kristallisierend’. (Possibly an allusion to a certain idolatry of a mythical past within German Nazi culture?) 38 Said underlines that history in its development is ‘managing to accomplish a greater realism, a more substantial “thickness” – a higher degree of truth’ (Said, ‘Introduction’, xxi). 39 A major thesis in the influential work of Lev I. Sˇestov (1938): see, in English, Lev I. Shestov, Athens and Jerusalem (Athens, OH: Ohio University Press, 1966). Richard Faber has affirmed with regard to this position: ‘Daß Auerbach dabei nicht ins andere, “panjudaistische” [vs “panellenische”] Extrem verfällt, ist heute genauso bemerkenswert. Auerbach erkennt und würdigt als Ursprung des “Abendlandes” die “méditerranée” im Ganzen’ (Richard Faber, Politische Dämonologie: über modernen Marcionismus, Würzburg: Königshausen und Neumann, 2006, 16n = Richard Faber, ‘Humilitas sive sublimitas. Erich Auerbachs Literaturreligionssoziologie im Kontext moderner Marcionismus’, in Barck/Treml (ed.), Erich Auerbach, 323–337, on 326). It is worth remembering that Faber (a student of both Jacob Taubes and Ernst Bloch, as in Faber, Politische Dämonologie, 7) was moved to read Auerbach’s essay on sermo humilis by Taubes (ibid., 17 = Faber, ‘Humilitas sive sublimitas’, 327); the Auerbachs had received from Bloch his Geist der Utopie (1918) as a gift for their marriage (Faber, Politische Dämonologie, 12n). For his part, Dawson (Christian Figural Reading, 246) affirms: ‘Auerbach’s interpretation is recognizably Bultmannian’; and quotes Karl F. Morrison, The Mimetic Tradition of Reform in the West (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1982), 409–10 where he affirms that Auerbach’s ‘long friendship with the theologian […] had a strong intellectual content’. 40 In consonance with Jacob Taubes, ‘Auerbach sprach also wohlüberlegt von “jüdisch-christ-

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‘gentile’, but also – which does not have the same meaning – ‘pagan’) intuition combined with a Jewish fulfilment. It is the fulfilment of a philosophical prophecy, or anticipation. ‘Only this Christian mixture of styles [diese christliche Stilmischung]’ in an anti-hierarchical sense, he synthesised, ‘could realize [verwirklichen] the prophecy [die Ahnung] which Plato formulates at the end of the Symposium’: in other words, ‘that one and the same poet should master both comedy and tragedy’. In fact Judaism (or as we shall see, the best part of it) and, only consequently, Christianity (or rather, the best part of it) could give the proper answer to the ‘Platonic anticipation or demand’,41 which was ‘the maintenance of the basic historical reality of figures, against all attempts at spiritually allegorical interpretation’ (italics ours). In fact, ‘allegory’ ‘undermine[s] the reality of history [den Wirklichkeitscharakter des Geschehens] and sees in it only extra-historical42 signs and significations, survived from late antiquity and passed into the Middle Ages’ (italics ours).43 A celebrated tool of Christian interpretation, allegory became in Auerbach’s view (a view which claimed to have grasped more authentically its Christian meaning) a pagan relic, a tool of the still active, although unconscious, pagan imagery which wanted to restore its worldly power over a world which defined itself as Christian. Conversely, the old companion to allegory in medieval theories, figura, became the guarantor of the reality of history and of the biblical Herrschaftsanspruch: the claim to absolute authority over the entire world.44 Since the Christian messiah had really incarnated himself within human (and not overhuman, celestial) beings, these ‘extra-historical signs and significations’ (which should include, if I may add, the hierarchies of semi-celestial, zodiacal pagan symbols influent upon the earthly world studied by Warburg) were not, in a sense, part of our (earthly) real world because they were not directly affected by the incarnation of the Christian messiah.45 Symbols and allegories could force human beings with their evocative power within this world, but could not free them from it, or contribute to the freedom realised through the incarnation.46 Struck by the events of his time,

41 42 43 44 45 46

licher Literatur” als einer Einheit (ohne dadurch Taubes’ Rede von seiner “christologischen Literaturgeschichte” zu dementieren)’ (Faber, Politische Dämonologie, 20 = Faber, ‘Humilitas sive sublimitas’, 329). E, 330; G 317: ‘platonische Ahnung oder Forderung’; It 2, 84: ‘intuizione o esigenza platonica’. That is hierarchical, overhuman, not subjected to historical development. E, 196; It 1, 213; G 190: ‘die grundsätzliche Aufrechthaltung des geschichtlichen Wirklichkeitscharakter des Figuren, gegen spiritualistisch-allegorische Strömungen siegreich verteidigt. […] außergeschichtliches Zeichen und Bedeutung’. Totalitarian, we could say remembering the hard times Auerbach experienced: a hidden reference to the opposition of his Weltanschauung to the totalitarian claims of his epoch? On the necessity for Auerbach to overcome the celestial (semi-natural) hierarchies in Dante, see Auerbach, Studi su Dante, 108–9. Said (‘Introduction’, xx) comments the notion of incarnation as ‘a centrally Christian idea,

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Auerbach gave the rhetorical term figura the role of preserving, like a message in a bottle, the fruitful heritage of the Greeks (obtained through intuition) and Hebrews/Christians (obtained through fulfilment) in the development of European culture. Opposing the well-known eighteenth-century Enlightenment’s argument against religion, seen as the cultural paradigm which impedes progress by legitimising fear and authority, Christianity – or, as Auerbach sought to demonstrate, the best part of it – contained an impulse towards freedom.47 For unusual as it may sound to modern ears, educated in a liberal democracy concerning ‘this and only this’ secularised world, the claim (based on a divine plan external to this world, thus in some sense absolutistic, hegemonic, and indemonstrable)48 to absolute authority of the biblical narrative had the power to contradict (and reduce to nothing) every other authority (hierarchy) within this world.49 In fact, Auerbach tried to sketch a kind of Befreiung of the earthly, human, effective reality from the overhuman hierarchies (celestial powers, natural forces) which subjugate the vastness of human experience although (or rather, because) they belong to this same world order. The ‘reduction to nothing’ of every hierarchy (although time-consuming and difficult to achieve, and impossible to secure once and for all) was in fact the aim of the European cultural development which had led, despite all its backlashes, directly to modern realism (and in some sense, we could add, to postmodernism): ‘the dissolution of reality’ – which means, if we read it correctly, the hierarchically ordered reality of this world, not the vastness of human experience, effective reality – ‘into multiple and multivalent reflections

whose prehistory Auerbach ingeniously locates in the contrast between Homer and the Old Testament’. 47 Although ‘vertical’, and implying a divine plan which is placed outside history, Christianity proved to be able to produce consequences also within human history, and to break the preceding world orders: cf. G, 51; It 1, 53; E, 45: ‘and yet, whatever kind of movement it may be which the New Testament writings introduced into phenomenal observation [in die Geschehensbetrachtung eingeführt haben], the essential point [das Wesentliche ist doch / rimane però essenziale che] is this: the deep subsurface layers, which were static for the observer of classical antiquity, began to move [daß überhaupt die bei den antiken Betrachtern ruhenden Tiefenschichten in Bewegung gerieten]’; cf. also G, 49; E, 43; It 1, 51: ‘are caught in a universal movement of the depths [einer allgemeinen Bewegung der Tiefe] which at first remains almost entirely below the surface and only very gradually – the Act of the Apostles show the beginnings of this development – emerges into the foreground of history [in den geschichtlichen Vordergrund dringt / si affaccia alla superficie della storia]’. 48 G, 20; E, 15; It 1, 18: ‘is so greatly in need of interpretation on the basis of its own content [aus seinem eigenen Inhalt heraus deutungsbedürftig], its claim to absolute authorithy’. 49 ‘On the one hand, the reality of the Old Testament presents itself as complete truth with a claim to sole authority, on the other hand, that very claim forces it to a constant intrepretative change [deutenden Veränderung] in its own content; for millennia it undergoes an incessant and active development with the life of man in Europe’ (E, 16; G, 21–2).

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of consciousness’50 was the extreme result of the Mischung of styles which could be traced back, if I am permitted to say so, from a very peculiar kind of Mischung (without confusion) between God and man: the incarnation.51 The (pessimistic, pagan) negative, hierarchical vision of life, seen as the theatre of inequalit[ies] between human beings52 had thus to be transformed into a positive surrendering to ‘the wealth of reality [die Wirklichkeitsfülle und Lebenstiefe] and depth of life in every moment’,53 and to ‘a radical theory of the equality of all men, not in an active and political sense’, but neither (as we saw above) in a mystical, symbolic, or allegorical one – a statement which needs to be explored more attentively. The positive goal lays in the possibility of achieving (as Dante’s characters do) a ‘greatness rising out of the humiliation’, ‘almost superhuman’:54 and this because ‘the extent of the pendulum’s swing’ – between the opposite extremes within the inner effective reality of each man – ‘is connected with the intensity of one’s personal history’ (italics ours).55 That kind of peculiar freedom which developed precisely in Europe, as the heritage of that Platonic-Jewish-Christian cluster, was not based on the pursuit of welfare and comfort but rather on the continual increase in the capacity to experience a greatness rising out of the humiliation within one’s own personal life (its inner reality) and along all the breadth, so to speak, of the pendulum’s swing between human emotions. It was thus fully human, or ‘just’ human, and not hierarchically overhuman: independent of hierarchies and powers precisely thanks to its foundation ‘beyond the human’. Which leads us to that important word in Auerbach’s theory: Pendelausschlag, the pendulum’s swing.56 This is a word used by Adolf Harnack, a church historian 50 G, 491; E, 551; It 2, 335: ‘ein Verfahren, welches die Wirklichkeit in vielfältige und vieldeutige Bewußtseinsspiegelungen auflöst’. 51 ‘dieser Mischung der Stilbezirke […] ist im Charakter der jüdisch-christlichen Schriften von Anfang an begründet […] wurde durch die Inkarnation Gottes in einen Menschen niedrigsten gesellschaftlichen Ranges […] herausgestellt’ (G, 47; It 1, 49); cf. E, 41: ‘Of course, this mingling of styles is not dictated by an artistic purpose. On the contrary, it was rooted from the beginning in the character of Jewish-Christian literature; it was graphically and harshly dramatized through God’s incarnation in a human being of the humblest social station’. 52 E, 497: ‘and even with Flaubert, the lower strata of the people, and indeed the people as such in general, hardly appear’; cf. It 1, 273; G, 441. 53 E, 552; It 2, 337; G, 493. 54 An expression contrary to what we have called the overhuman hierarchies. 55 E, 18; It 1, 22; G, 24: ‘aber ihre Größe, aus Erniedrigung emporgestiegen, ist nahe am Übermenschlichen und ein Abbild der Größe Gottes’ (italics ours: close, but not coincident with the – mundane – Übermensch, because its greatness comes from the image of the greatness of God, and is thus not mundane); ‘die Weite des Pendelsausschlags mit der Intensität der Personengeschichtlichen zusammenhängt’. I note by the way that here Auerbach employs the expression ‘pendulum swing’ which he will refer only some pages later (see later) to Harnack. 56 A very important term which already appears without explanatory remarks in Fg, 40: ‘Zugleich ist der Pendelausschlag der potestat verbi auf der neuen Grundlage recht weit geworden’, and then all through Mimesis: ‘Aus der beliebigen Alltäglichkeit seines Lebens wird

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and very influential thinker, to express the inner feelings of Peter denying Jesus (and, later, his bitter understanding of his denial), and which Auerbach employed to express the deliverance of man from rigid categories: ‘the “pendulation” in the heart of one specific individual’, he wrote, was so ‘tremendous’ that it could ‘not be fitted into a system of judgements’57 operating ‘with static58 categories’ (italics ours).59 I would conclude regarding this point that ‘realism’ meant, for Auerbach, that reality, in its wealth and depth, could exist only inside creatures, because of their tremendous capacity to experience the extreme consequences of their choices when they are freed from the power of external hierarchies: ‘imitation of reality is imitation of the sensory experience of life on earth’.60

Implementation or counter-reaction? So far, I have tried to propose arguments in favour of the (cultural if not political, in any case not only literary) militancy of Auerbach’s literary theory;61 I will now briefly enter the question about Auerbach’s potentially hidden supersessionism.

57 58 59 60 61

Petrus zu er ungeheuersten Rolle aufgerufen’ (E, 42; It 1, 49; G, 47–8); ‘und welch ungeheurer Pendelaussschlag (dieses selbe Wort hat Harnack einmal gebraucht, als er von der Verleugnungsszene sprach)’ (G, 47–8); cf. E, 42: ‘what enormous “pendulation” (Harnack in discussing the denial scene once used the term Pendelausschlag) is going on in him!’; cf. It 1, 50: ‘una nuova oscillazione pendolare’ = G, 48: ‘ein neues Ausschlage des Pendels’; or It 1, 50: ‘tali oscillazioni pendolari’ = G, 48: ‘ein solches Hin- und Herschlagen des Pendels’ = E, 43: ‘Such a to and fro of the pendulum’. It seems to me that, for Auerbach, the to and fro of the pendulum serves to extricate man from his condition of slavery to overmundane hierarchies, as are the rigid, nonliving, categories of moralism: ‘einer mit ruhenden Kategorien arbeitenden Beurteilung, und für eine Gesinnung, die die Rechtfertigung nicht in den Werken, sondern im Glaube sucht, hat die Moralistik ihre führende Stellung verloren’ (G, 51). A rational system, belonging to this world order. That is hierarchical. E, 45; It 1, 53; G, 51: ‘ist sogar in die abstrakten und statische Begriffe […] eine dialektische Bewegung gekommen […] die sie völlig erneuert’. E, 191; It 1, 207; G, 185: ‘Nachahmung der Wirklichkeit ist Nachahmung der sinnlichen Erfahrung des irdischen Lebens’. It may be interesting to add that in Italy, Mimesis was also introduced as a document of a different kind of (political) militancy, well recognised at the end of the ‘Saggio introduttivo’ to its Italian translation by Aurelio Roncaglia (It 1, vii–xxxix): ‘anche l’Auerbach può dirsi critico militante […] come militante potrebbe parere vicino alle posizioni della critica marxista […] basterà ricordare […] Lukács: […] il problema del realismo […] per il marxismo […] è il problema fondamentale della realtà’; Roncaglia comments: ‘Dalle posizioni marxiste lo allontana però proprio il suo “teologismo”’ (ibid.); the same effort to recognise and categorise the same mixture of Marxist and theological overtones took place in Walter Benjamin’s reception. On the political/unpolitical reception of Mimesis, see Newman, ‘Nicht am “falschen Ort”’, 343–4.

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In other words, did the German-Jewish scholar respond to the rigid, violent, antiSemitic criticism of his time with the argument that Judaism was the forerunner of Christianity, and Christianity the forerunner of our mature, secularised, modernity? (Needless to say, the crucial point, or the ambiguity, of such an argument lies in the possibility, for the forerunner, to exist also after the fulfilment.) If so, it would not be an unusual position among the assimilated Jews of his time: Judaism was the forbear (long before Dante, Montaigne, and the other champions of Mimesis) of those universal values which the progressive democracies of western Europe proposed to the entire world. Here I hope to show that Auerbach’s position was far more complex. An example which can throw some light on his position is a (marginal) problem of translation. Let’s return to the first chapter of Mimesis, which is its most quoted, with its striking parallel between the Bible and Homer, Abraham and the Greek heroes. Unlike Homer,62 whose stories wanted ‘merely to make us forget our own reality for a few hours’,63 the biblical narrative ‘seeks to overcome our reality’,64 containing ‘a claim to absolute authority’,65 ‘to represent universal history’ (italics ours),66 and to ‘spread to traditions other than the Jewish’ (italics ours):67 the (biblical) ‘need for interpretation reaches out beyond the original Jewish-Israelitic [Jüdisch-Israelitischen] realm of reality [Wirklichkeitsbereiche]’.68 Although deeply rooted in Israel, the biblical narrative contained an inner force that overcame the single human, historical experience of Israel, and touched the profound reality of every human being. This is found in the English version printed in 1953. Three years later the (albeit well-written) Italian translation by Aurelio Roncaglia translated the expression ‘Jüdisch-Israelitischen’ – denoting the pre-Christian biblical Israel – with ‘l’originaria realtà giudaico-cristiana’ (italics ours), thus adding ‘Christian’ to a purely Jewish context. As a result, ‘Christianity’, and not Judaism, was for the Italian reader the inner driving force of the Hebrew (or rather, Christian) claim to 62 ‘A liar […] who lied to give pleasure’ = ‘[ein] harmloser Lügner […] der log, um zu gefallen’ (E, 14; It 1, 16; G, 19). 63 E, 15; It 1, 18; G, 20: ‘für einige Stunden unsere eigene Wirklichkeit vergessen lassen wie Homer’. 64 For reasons of consistency I have to add here that as far as I could examine, ‘our reality’ (‘eigene Wirklichkeit’) has to be understood within this passage as an equivalent of ‘mundane [i. e. belonging only to this world], singular experience’, and not as the ‘Wirklichkeit’ which stands out in the title of Mimesis. This ‘Wirklichkeit’ has the additional feature of a wide emotional experience (cf., as referred above, the role of the ‘pendulum’), not subjected to human and overhuman hierarchies. I have used below the phrase ‘profound reality’ to express this wider meaning of ‘Wirklichkeit’. 65 E, 16; G, 20: ‘sein Herrschaftsanspruch’; It 1, 18: ‘pretesa di dominazione’; also G, 22: ‘Anspruch auf Alleinherrschaft’; It 1, 19: ‘la pretesa del dominio universale’. 66 E, 16; G, 21: ‘gibt Weltgeschichte’; It 1, 18: ‘dà la storia universale’. 67 Ibid. 68 E, 16; G, 21; It 1, 19.

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overcome boundaries, and to give its impulse to the European cultural development. However, if we read Auerbach’s text, it is quite clear that the driving force was already within (biblical, pre-Christian) Judaism, and only as a consequence would it pass into Christianity, being in fact a consequence of the claim already made by the biblical narrative (regarding Abraham) to represent universal (and not only Jewish) history. Perhaps the weight of a powerful, although not fully conscious, cultural tradition drove Roncaglia to add what was not included in the original text? In order to understand some consequences of that (probably unconscious) slip on the part of the Italian translator, we must recall that the ‘claim to absolute authority’ of the biblical narrative seeks to overcome our mundane, stratified reality69 with a ‘weltgeschichtliche Anspruch’,70 where ‘welt’ means our (cultural) environment. But this ‘becomes increasingly difficult the further our historical environment [unsere Lebenswelt] is removed from that of the biblical books’, so that ‘it is inevitable that they themselves be adapted through interpretative transformation’.71 This involves intense crises, and the ever-resurgent possibility of backlashes. For example, When, through too great a change in environment [Veränderungen der Lebenswelt] and through the awakening of a critical consciousness [Erwachen der kritischen Bewußtseins], this becomes impossible, the biblical claim to absolute authority is jeopardized [so gerät der Herrschaftsanpsruch in Gefahr] 72 […] the Biblical stories become ancient legends [alten Sagen], and the doctrine they had contained, now dissevered from them [losgelöste Lehre], become a disembodied image [zu einem körperlosen Gebilde].73

This brings us either to a rigid, empty moralistic, or, in other words, to individual speculations far from reality. But there is also a positive kind of ‘adaptation’, or reaction; since, for Auerbach, the process of including ‘the new and strange world […] within the [originally] Jewish religious frame […] nearly always reacts upon the frame, which requires enlarging and modifying’.74 Here, ‘reaction’ is not the emergence of a countermovement (as in the usual meaning of the word ‘reactionary’), as it had been, for instance, in ‘the old, hierarchical separation of the styles, rediscovered during French classicism’. In fact, this (positive) ‘reaction’ entails the enlargement of the previous (here: Jewish) culture in order to contain and include the new results of its inner development: which means, in other words, the implementation of the revolution on its proper terrain. Now, con69 70 71 72 73 74

E, 15; G, 20; It 1, 18. G, 22; E, 16: ‘the claim to represent universal history’; It 1, 19. E, 15; G, 20; It 1, 18. It 1, 18 has a not so perspicuous ‘la pretesa di dominazione cadde in pericolo’. E, 16; G, 21; It 1, 18; italics ours. E, 16; G, 21; It 1, 19; italics ours.

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tinues Auerbach in Willard R. Trask’s translation, ‘the most striking piece of that interpretation of this sort occurred in the first century of the Christian era, in consequence of Paul’s mission to the Gentiles’.75 Judaism – or, to be more precise, that small part of Judaism concerned with the faith in Jesus the messiah – changed his views and opened up a universal mission on earth. In the aforementioned sentence, the subject is Paul (and the Church Fathers); the period is the first century BC; the frame, which needs to be enlarged, is the aforementioned ‘Jewish religious frame’: ‘Paul and the Church Fathers reinterpreted the entire Jewish tradition’ – where ‘interpretation’ means ‘implementation’, not ‘counterreaction’: the Church Fathers and (not against) Paul expressed a potentiality of that very ‘Jewish religious frame’. But here again a difference occurred in the translation. Trask had written ‘in the first century of the Christian era’ whereas Roncaglia translated ‘nei primi secoli del cristianesimo’, and ‘Paul’s mission to the Gentiles’76 instead of ‘la conversione dei pagani [der Heidenmission] per opera di san Paolo e dei Padri della Chiesa’,77 giving the entire process a wider range of time and a different frame of interpretation: ‘Christian vs pagan’, instead of ‘Jewish (hence, and only as a consequence, Christian) vs gentile (hence, and only as a consequence of that particular kind of Jewishness founded in Christ, Christian)’. The two translations,78 with their different errors, may reflect two different readings. For the Italian reader, the range of time was preserved in its longer duration, but the Christian Church, and not Judaism, had become the central figure of the story: and this to the point that Paul, the Jew, risked being transformed into a mere, culturally ‘apolid’, forerunner of the Church Fathers; in turn, the Fathers risked being transformed into a Christian, heterogeneous, outcome of Judaism (thus, a backlash) rather than a development of the inner, biblical claim, in the form of an enlargement, a ‘reaction upon its frame’. For the English reader, on the contrary, the subject remained the Jews, and its counterparts were correctly the gentiles, not the pagans. However, the narrower space of time – the first century – made the process lose its historical continuity, and be reduced to a quick transformation provoked by Paulus instead of a slow process 75 E, 16; for a discussion of the original see later. 76 Trask – following an accurateness which is still today, after some decades of work on the ‘replacement theology’, unusual – translates ‘Gentiles’ and not ‘Pagans’ which had been nearer to the German Heiden, so avoiding the risk of a supersessionistic reading of Auerbach’s text. 77 E, 16; G, 21; It 1, 19; italics ours. 78 E, 16; G, 21; It 1, 19: ‘die Eindrucksvollste Deutungsarbeit dieser Art geschah in den ersten Jahrhunderten des Christentums, infolge der Heidenmission, durch Paulus und die Kirchenväter; sie deuteten die gesamte jüdische Überlieferung um in eine Reihe von vorbedeutenden Figuren des Erscheinens Christi’. On the importance of the fourth centurty for the meaning of figura see also Fg, 31: ‘Seit dem 4. Jahrhundert tritt das Wort figura […] in voller Ausbildung zu Tage’.

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of comprehension and deeper understanding. In the English translation, as in the original text, the Hebrew Bible could be considered as a ‘succession of figures’ – not allegories – ‘prognosticating the appearance of Christ’;79 in the Italian translation, the Hebrew Bible came closer to being a succession of allegories, i. e. a rigid frame, which Christianity freed from its rigidity.

A struggle with Christianity Not very much has been written on Willard R. Trask (1900–80),80 who was considered in his time the dean of American translators;81 a man whose interests ‘encompassed prehistoric religions, the poetry of the medieval minnesingers, Joan of Arc, Provençal verses and Polynesian folk songs, the memoirs of Casanova, Stalinist police terror and the mysteries of Georges Simenon’, besides works on the history of religions.82 We can only suppose that the extent of his cultural interests helped him to choose a term far more accurate than the original one. In any case, Auerbach’s point was that the mission of the first centuries had been different and purer than that of the fourth onwards, where figure began to be mixed with moralism and allegories,83 and where the backlash took the form of a struggle within (already affirmed) Christianity, and not on the frontier between Judaism and Christianity. The Greek and Roman (i. e. gentiles’) cultural forces, as opposed to the (equally gentiles’) ‘Platonic anticipations’ seen by Auerbach, had remained sufficiently alive to promote counter-reactions within human history. Without being a prisoner of the glorification of classical culture, Auerbach could write that ‘the culture of antiquity’ was, in spite of the Platonic anticipations and of all its vitality, ‘long characterized by certain senile tracts of calcification [Züge greisenhafter Erstarrung]’, and when the ‘newly emerging peoples everywhere 79 E, 16. 80 See the obituary ‘Willard Trask Dies: Hailed as Translator’, Chicago Tribune, 14 August 1980, available at http://archives.chicagotribune.com/1980/08/14/page/55/article/willard-traskdies-hailed-as-translator [1. 10. 2018]. Trask was born in Berlin, the son of American parents. The Trasks lived in Germany, France, Russia, England and Panama. 81 Paul Mann, ‘The Translator’s Voice: An Interview with Richard Howard’, Translation Review 9 (1982) 5–15, available at http://translation.utdallas.edu/Interviews/RichardHowardTR_9. html [1. 10. 2018]. 82 The list of his published works includes the medieval Theologia Germanica (1949), Silesius (1953), Curtius (1953), Henry Corbin (1960), Mircea Eliade (1957 to 1982) besides Mann (1954), Ortega y Gasset (1957), Hölderlin (1984) and many others. Does the cursory judgement of Said (‘Introduction’, ix) – ‘a satisfying readable English translation by Willard R. Trask’ – means a mild appreciation or an apology for representing the same translation? 83 ‘Für die Mission des vierten und der folgenden Jahrhunderte war die Figuraldeutung von grossem praktischen Nutzen […] oft freilich vermischt mit rein allegorischen und moralischen Deutungen’ (Fg, 38, italics ours).

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clashed with the surviving institutions of Rome, the vestiges of antique culture […] retained a tremendous prestige [ein ungeheures Prestige] despite [their] decline and rigidification’.84 Only when ‘the dogma was established’ and ‘the Church’s task become more and more a matter of organization’, when the biblical narrative85 was faced with ‘peoples completely unprepared […] figural interpretation must inevitably become a simple and rigid scheme [zu einem simplistischen und starren Schema]’,86 losing its reality. The ‘interpretation’ which ought to be ‘figural’ was thus transformed into a dissolution of ‘the content of reality of actual events [die den Geschehnissen ihren Wirklichkeitsgehalt auslaugte] […], leaving them only their content of [allegorical] meaning [nur noch Bedeutungsgehalt]’.87 An unhappy but unavoidable compromise took place here because of the situation of the new gentile people: a compromise which again introduced into the ‘real’ meaning of figura a reminder of ‘symbolic’, allegorical conceptions. The result was the double, Janus-face of figura88 which was so widespread prior to Auerbach’s investigation. In any case, Christianity could not be considered a ‘third force’ between Jews and gentiles: the Christians were originally Jews who, like Paul, had shared the idea of a particular mission of Judaism towards the gentiles to the end of the time: that is, within a curious space-time situation where history, after the real incarnation and until the real second coming of the Christian messiah, was now, with all its ambiguity and potentialities, situated. Auerbach stated it most clearly: ‘It is not Christianity which brought about the process of rigidification [i. e. the compromise], but rather Christianity was drawn to it’; ‘rigid, narrow, and unproblematic schematization [Schematisierung] is originally [ursprünglich] completely alien [sehr fremd] to the Christian concept of reality [Wirklichkeitsbewußtsein]’.89 Neither had figural interpretation been a Christian discovery, nor was it the ‘hidden’ cause of the backlashes within Christianity: with the same logic one could also 84 E, 120; G, 120; It 1, 133. 85 I paraphrase, with this expression, what I understand as the core of Auerbach’s argument; the proper subject of this sentence is here yet again the ‘Church’: E, 120; G, 120; It 1, 132. 86 E, 119; G, 120; It 1, 132. 87 G, 120; It 1, 132. 88 As Auerbach also wrote in his former essay ‘Figura’, this term had a double meaning for ancient authors, both positive and negative: cf. Fg, 40: ‘Wir finden figura als “tiefere Bedeutung” etwa bei Sedulius […] und bei Lactanz als “Täuschung” oder “täuschende Gestalt” […] als “leere” oder “täuschende Redensart”’. Cf. also Fg, 51n: ‘Es gibt viele Zwischenformen, die sowohl Figur wie Symbol sind; so vor allem die Eucharestie mit der wirklichen Gegenwart Christi’ (italics ours); the question of the Eucharist could seem, from a figural point of view, ambiguous: was this a possibile reason for Auerbach’s silence on the Reformation? See also Fg, 55 = Fi, 214–15, where Auerbach criticises the authors who do not distinguish between figura and ‘anderen, allegorischen oder symbolischen Darstellungsformen’. 89 E, 119; G, 120: ‘nicht das Christentum erzeugte die Erstarrung, sondern es wurde von ihr miterfaßt’; It 1, 132.

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argue today that policemen are the hidden cause of the traffic jams because they appear in constant conjunction with them. Figural interpretation was a Jewish tool,90 not a Christian invention of the Church Fathers. ‘It would be a mistake [ein Irrtum] simply to make Christianity responsible for the rigidity and narrowness which appears in the late antique legend [in der spätantiken Legende]’;91 a rigidity from which, in any case, ‘the vernacular texts are able to emancipate themselves only gradually [nur langsam befreien]’ because of the ‘effect of the JudeoChristian92 manner of dealing with the events in the world of reality [der jüdischChristlichen Gestaltung des Geschehenen] [which] led to anything but rigidity and narrowness [alles andere war als Erstarrung und Verengung]’,93 overcoming the rigid spheres of morality and sociology.94 Paul, and the Fathers: Auerbach wanted to redeem the Church Fathers from the stereotype of rigid thinkers,95 bringing them back to the vital currents of a living Judaism.96 A theory which, in turn, brought Paul’s ‘jüdischen Vorstellungen’ into contrast with ‘im schärfsten Gegensatz zum Judenchristentum’, a negative term, indicating the Christian Jews (‘gesetztreuen Judenchristen’)who did not follow Paul’s ideas97 and rigidified the interpretation given by Paulus as a Christian Jew. Even if their influence was soon to decline, on the opposite side, the influence of those who wanted (in the same, rigidifying manner) to cancel (i. e. allegorise) the Old Testament grew. Here the shadow of Marcion appears, tied to the use of the allegory.98 Paul was considered 90 On Paulus see Fi, 206–8 = Fg, 44: ‘Dass die Figuraldeutung von vornhinein in der Mission eine bedeutende Rolle gespielt hat, lässt sich auch aus manchen Stellen der Apostelgeschichte (z. B. 8,32) vermuten’. 91 Auerbach carefully did not employ Sage, the term related to allegory. 92 A positive term. 93 E, 119; G, 119; It 1, 131–2. 94 ‘The hiddenness of God and finally his parousìa, his incarnation in the common form of an ordinary life [die Inkarnation in ein beliebig-alltägliches Leben], these concepts – we tried to show – brought about a dynamic movement in the basic conception of life [der Lebensanschauung], a swing of the pendulum [einen Pendelausschlag] in the realms of morals and sociology’: E, 119; G, 119; It 1, 131–2. 95 ‘Even the Church Fathers, Augustine in particular, have not by any means come down to us as schematized figures pursuing a rigidly preordained course’: E, 119; G, 120. 96 ‘Auerbach auch das Neue Testament würdigt […] obgleich ‚Kanon’ nur soziokulturell verstehend […] im Gegensatz zu beispielweise Hermann Cohen und Gershom Scholem, aber einmal mehr in Übereinstimmung mit Bloch, Taubes, und auch Buber und Benjamin’ (Faber, Politische Dämonologie, 16n). 97 Fg, 44 = Fi, 206. 98 Fg, 44 = Fi 206: ‘zwar nahm der Einfluss der gesetztreuen Judenchristen bald ab, dafür erstarkte die Gegnerschaft von Seiten derer, die das AT entweder ganz ausschalten oder nur abstrakt allegorisch deuten wollten’ (italics ours). The Italian translation has: ‘l’influsso degli ebrei cristiani fedeli alla legge’, which is literally correct but conceptually problematic since there are here (regarding the Christians and the so-called Judaizing Christians) two different kinds of allegiance to the Law; this latter group should be defined as ‘supporters of a Christianity reduced to the existing structures of the Jewish people’ and not as Christians maintaining a

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by Auerbach as a Jew whose Judaism had aufgehoben itself (had found his Messiah), thus superseding its former form which now appeared rigid: this is why, in Mimesis, the Hegelian verb aufheben seems to be correct here – his life was not a story where Christianity ‘supersedes’, or annullates, Judaism.99

Auerbach (and Benjamin) on destiny I have tried to demonstrate that Auerbach provided, with his figural conception, a militant, cultural, and also political theory of the European development free from the risks of a ‘replacement theology’, contrasting both ethnocentrism(s) (Eurocentrisms)100 and the idea of an unavoidable Jewish cultural assimilation. Yet, if this is true, it would be interesting to explore in which way Auerbach’s idea was indebted to other similar, coeval, theories. I shall now quote the words he wrote in 1921, well before his exile and the composition of Mimesis, in the short essay ‘Zur Dante-Feier’. ‘Dante’s secret’, he wrote, ‘was the internal bond between the human singularity and its fate’. The special humanity of each and every character in the Commedia was not the result of a ‘modernistic’ stress on the psychological (individualistic) personality of each character; it lays instead in their immediate linkage with their own personal fate, which created a perfect faith in the (e. g. divinity of the) Jewish Law. Another difficulty arises with the translation ‘o darne soltanto un’interpretazione astrattamente allegorica’, where ‘astrattamente’ is not, as it may sound, a subgender, but a synonym, of ‘allegorica’: since, for Auerbach, ‘allegory’ is ever abstract, not real, thus being in opposition with ‘figura’ a pejorative term. 99 As far as I can see, Auerbach uses this verb in order to indicate, within Paul’s Judaism, the passage to a newer way of understanding his proper tradition. I am not sure I agree with Professor Dawson (Christian Figural Reading, 250) when he affirms that ‘Paul’s notion of fulfillment results not only in “annulment”; there is a further connotation; the law is “set aside”, or “detached”. Auerbach’s phrase suggests that Paul not only renders the law without further import but that he sets it aside from his own concerns’. Dawson underlines that, for Dante, in Auerbach’s words, ‘the historical reality of the figure is “not annulled, but confirmed and fulfilled [nicht aufgehoben, sondern bestätigt und erfüllt] by the deeper meaning”’, but it seems to me problematic to infer from this example a consistency in the use of the German word Aufheben as ‘annulment’; especially because what here is in question is precisely the ‘right to exist’ of the material figura after the fulfilment (‘nicht aufgehoben’): in this context, the Law is, without any doubts, a figura. The point is rather to maintain the ‘profecy’ real and to separate ‘Verwandlung’ (transformation/transfiguration) from ‘annulment’; cf. Fg, 45 (= Fi, 207): ‘Auf diese Art verwandelte [Paulus] sein Geist, der in einer beispielhaften Weise die praktisch-politischen mit den dichterisch gestaltenden Glaubenskräften verband, die jüdische Vorstellung von der Wiedererstehung des Moses im Messias zu einer System der Realprophetie, in dem der Wiedererstandene das Werk des Vorläufers zugleich erfüllt und aufhebt’ (italics ours). 100 At least in the sense that Europe has been the theatre of this positive evolution, but also of its rigid and negative backlashes: this is of course not Said’s opinion, as stated earlier.

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coincidence: Charakter and Schicksal are the same.101 If we understand Schicksal as the divine plan, it becomes a conscious prelude to his mature, figural, concept: ‘the divine plan’ has ‘a oneness’ with human characters which ‘occur on earth’, so that, we might add, the transcendental (not the hierarchical, overhuman, but still created) world may irrupt exactly in the middle of the earthly human world, giving human characters an extreme capacity for emotional variation – the Pendelsausschlag. Had Dante been, even more than Vico, Auerbach’s Virgil?102 Carlo Ginzburg recently drew attention to the fact that Auerbach developed an interest in Dante prior to that in Vico and, what is noteworthy, in connection with Benjamin’s short essay ‘Schicksal und Character’ (1921),103 where Ginzburg writes that Benjamin emphasised the difference between the two words, in order to redefine them.104 May I humbly expand on this observation of my former professor of Modern History at the University of Bologna? I think it deserves further enquiry. In ‘Schicksal und Charakter’, Benjamin had considered the place of man within nature (in Auerbach’s vocabulary: the human and overhuman, but not the transcendental, world). Fate enters the scene of man as something that does not affect his profound reality (in Auerbach’s terms, the ‘meaning’ of the figura: the transcendental element within us capable of promoting an extreme pendulation), since it affects only his ‘natural’ constitution, which is (for Benjamin and, if our presentation is true, also for Auerbach) but an appearance of life: ‘the bare life within him’, ‘the appearance not yet completely dissolved’.105 Auerbach would probably have also agreed with Benjamin about the falseness of what the common man believes, i. e. that character and fate are different.106 The perceived difference is, in fact, merely a matter of differences of power (because fate still belongs to the overhuman level of the mundane, earthly world), i. e. of quantity, 101 Auerbach, ‘Zur Dante-Feier’, 408. The expression translates a fragment of Heraclitus that in 1929 Auerbach put at the very beginning of his ‘Dante als Dichter der irdischen Welt’ (cf. Erich Auerbach, ‘Dante poeta del mondo terreno’, in Auerbach, Studi su Dante, 1–161). 102 Said (‘Introduction, xiv) affirms that ‘his Dante book [is] in some ways, I think, the most exciting and intense work’, and that Chapter 8 of Mimesis is ‘a masterly, almost vertiginous embodiment of Auerbach’s own ideas about Dante’ (ibid., xxiv). 103 Ginzburg, ‘Auerbach und Dante’, 33. The essay was written in 1919: see ‘Note’ in Benjamin, Walter, Opere complete, edited by Tiedemann, Rolf/Schweppenhäuser, Hermann/Ganni, Enrico (9 vols.; Torino: Einaudi, 2001–14) vol. 1 Scritti 1906–1922 (2008), 652–3, on 652. 104 Ginzburg, ‘Auerbach und Dante’, 33–4. The significance of Benjamin’s text for Auerbach was pointed out to Ginzburg during the discussion of his paper (cf. ibid., 33n). 105 Walter Benjamin, ‘Destino e carattere’, in Benjamin, Opere complete, vol. 1, 452–8, on 455; for the original German see Walter Benjamin, Gesammelte Schriften, edited by Tiedemann, Rolf/ Schweppenhäuser, Hermann (7 vols.; Frankfurt a.M.: Suhrkamp, 1977), vol. 2/1. 106 On this point, although from a slightly different perspective, see Martin Vialon, ‘Die Stimme Dantes und ihre Resonanz’, in Barck/Treml (ed.), Erich Auerbach, 46–56, on 53: ‘Aber Auerbach kam diesem Gedanken [the identity of both concepts] nahe’.

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measurable in terms of force and thus of lack of liberty. Character and fate do share the same hierarchical world, so that no fate, no hierarchy can give a man’s character the experience of an entire Pendelausschlag. In fact, at a rational glance character and fate fade into one another: again, as Benjamin wrote, sie sind eines. This (irrational) subjection to what belongs to the mundane sphere keeps men in the darkness (to use a theological word); while Benjamin wrote, with his characteristic use of the understatement, ‘in the fog’ (a phrase also rich with biblical overtones). In fact, for Benjamin as for Auerbach, the light of the Greek genius really did shine in that fog, but (for Benjamin) the result was just a state of numbness/aphasia towards the sublime107 expressed in Greek tragedy. Paradoxically enough, the Greek intuition of the logos could not find the proper logoi to express itself. May we conclude that even for Benjamin, Athens was not far from Jerusalem? An answer to this point should explore the nature of that Janusfaced ‘fate’: ‘overhuman’, but still earthly, nontranscendent, and still fully ‘mundane’.

Within Athens, and within Jerusalem ‘Fate’ and ‘hierarchies’: which imagery, or universe of discourse, is at work here? I believe it would be easy to trace these terms back to the Pauline (New Testamentary) concept of the (hierarchically ordered, powerful although created and thus not divine, idolatrically adored in paganism) ‘elements of the world’:108 ‘Ye were Gentiles, carried away unto these dumb idols’ (1 Cor 12:2); ‘in bondage under the elements of the world’ (Gal 4:3; Col 2:8–20); and not ‘in the heavenly places, far above all principality, and power’ (Eph 1:20–3). This mundane order conceals the ‘profound reality’ hidden in man under the veil of [natural, bare] appearance, so that ‘it doth not yet appear what we shall be’ (1 John 3:2). Man, as an earthly creature, subjected to overhuman, but still mundane powers, hid within himself a transcendent reality. Auerbach introduced (as opposed to ‘mundane’) a concept very close to that vision. In Mimesis, he introduced a neologism ‘of essential importance’: ‘the new term “creatural”’109 in order to express ‘life’s subjection to suffering’,110 a term which recalls Rom 8:20 (‘For the 107 Benjamin, ‘Destino e carattere’, 455. 108 Biblical quotations are from the King James Bible. See also Eph 4:17–19. 109 E, 249; It 1, 271; G, 238: ‘den bisher nicht verwandten Ausdruck “kreatürlich” einzuführen’. The reference is to the preceding page: G, 238 = It 1, 271: ‘das Bild vom wirklich lebenden Menschen, welches die christliche Stilmischung geschaffen hatte, nämlich das kreatürliche, nun auch außerhalb der im engeren Sinne christlichen Sphäre auftaucht’. 110 G, 238: ‘der christlichen Anthropologie eigentümlich, daß sie das dem Leiden und der Vergänglichkeit Unterworfene am Menschen stark heraushebt’; It 1, 271.

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creature was made subject to vanity’) and Rom 8:22 (‘the whole creation groaneth and travaileth in pain’).111 ‘Mundane vs creatural’: a fight which took place within ‘Athens’ (Plato vs the pagan hierarchies) but also within Jerusalem (the appearance of life within the almost rigidified Christianity vs ‘Dante’s secret’). It was a fight without appeasement. Auerbach resolutely denied that optimistic, dialectical Aufhebung between modernity, on the one hand, and Jerusalem and Athens, on the other. In this sense, his position was opposed to the epigones of Hegelian view of a fully mundane western rationality which excluded a transcendent divine plan and considered Greek culture and the biblical religions – both old and new – as their (already superseded) forerunners. For the very same reason he was also opposed to those well-educated and partly assimilated European Jews who perceived the development of European culture, almost on the brink of the Shoah, as friendly in itself and without conflict. It was a struggle between ‘life’ and ‘rigidity’: on the one hand, the progressive perception of the wealth of one’s own experience, stimulated by Platonic anticipation and whose driving force was the biblical revelation; on the other, the attempt to regain lost ground by the – affected but not defeated – mundane hierarchies of antiquity. Auerbach’s view was totally disenchanted: the extent of a possible drawing back was proportional to the extent of the (never completely) achieved progress; a developing, evolutionary framework always open to total regression.112 For Benjamin, too, who was another champion of disenchantment, the progressive movement from Greeks to modernity did not exclude a regression: the modern age was a confusing setback into the fog; the demonic element remained strong and overpowering within modernity. Ancient and medieval thinkers had seen better. Unhappiness and guilt, the fatal elements of the pagan semi-demonic world, had been able to enter quickly that very Christianity which had boasted of defeating the demons.113 Benjamin concluded his short essay by showing that ‘fate’ had to be deduced (in a Kantian sense) as a necessary belief which serves a semi-natural (i. e. still mundane) sphere of powers devoid of happiness, and that the same is true of ‘character’, unable to produce its own fate as long as it remains confined within (individualistic, psychological) nature.114 Out of that sphere came fate (bearing a different meaning in each of these spheres: in one, the mundane, and, in the other, of a nonmundane fulfilment) revealing itself as beatitude, and the character as innocence. Both merge in the idea of happiness, a 111 And ‘die mit der Heilsgeschichteverknüpfte Modellvorstellung von Christi Passion zwingend gegeben’: G, 238; It 1, 271. 112 Auerbach (‘Dante poeta del mondo terreno’, 15) affirms that the history of Christ took more than a millennium to be understood in its proper meaning (that is, with Dante, and for a while, before the great subsequent crisis). 113 Benjamin, ‘Destino e carattere’, 454–6. 114 Ibid., 455.

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term opposed to fate and characteristically unknown to the classical (pagan, mundane) Greek thought, which considered happiness as a temptation sent to man by the gods. Therefore, for Benjamin, ‘happiness, beatitude and innocence lead out of the sphere of [mundane] destiny’;115 where, while Auerbach could continue and conclude, ‘Schicksal und Charakter sind eines’. The biblical revelation had finally given, to these anticipative words expressed by the Greek world, their proper meaning.

Within – and beyond – history What value did this brief yet richly significant, essay, which traced the development of the whole European culture and was written in 1921, have for Benjamin? In a letter written to Hugo von Hofmannsthal in 1924, Benjamin returned to the essay considering it retrospectively as a failed attempt to free these two words from their secular conceptual encrustations. He judged his attempt a pedantic drilling, a rude perforation, rather than a respectful excavation aiming to delineate their original life within the spirit of the German language. Given this failure, Benjamin never again dared a similar attempt and later took up the concept of fate only as an ‘excursus’. However, he continued (silently and indirectly) to put – according to Adorno, who was not a sympathetic observer in that regard – at the very centre of his own thought the relationship between ‘nature’ (which included the semi-natural sphere) and ‘beyond-nature’.116 On the other hand, Auerbach’s realism was destined to nurture the debate on the methods and the intentions of (modern and postmodern) literature. If Benjamin did not attempt a second frontal attack to remove immediately old conceptual encrustations from timeless fatal words, Auerbach became famous as a literary critic, not as an historian, nor as a theologian, perhaps because these disciplines (history in particular) were too encrusted with (rigidified and rigidifying) ‘legends’? For both scholars, historical words and deeds could free one from their subjugation to mundanity only with regard to a plan beyond history. The redemption, not only a matter for the next world, had a meaningful task within this world.

115 Ibid., 454. 116 Benjamin, ‘Note’, 653. According to Adorno, the couple ‘nature-overnature’ had for Benjamin its roots in Kant (interpreted in an ‘ontological’ sense, which Adorno did not appreciate); but at the same time Benjamin reinterpreted these concepts ‘under his Saturnian glance’: a method of reinterpretation, if I may add, not far from Auerbach’s position.

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Addendum: a Passover dinner While historical deeds seem to belong immediately to mankind as a whole, religious views live, so to speak, insulated in a more undefined, personal, if not irrational, sphere. A kind of addendum might be necessary here in order to explore the effective value for a scientific enquiry, which the historians of culture usually practise, of a religious, all-catching, explanation, such as that proposed by Auerbach (and, perhaps the young Benjamin). In addition, as both were Jews in a largely anti-Semitic world and as assimilated Jews, which indeed also meant being alienated from a very significant part of the religious tradition of Israel, Auerbach and Benjamin may have felt themselves to be in an awkward position towards both gentiles and Jews. Is it due to this potential objection that Auerbach, separating the ‘cultural religious roots’ which can influence a man from his personal religious commitment, wrote on Montaigne that ‘The question of his religious profession – which, by the way, I consider an idle question – has nothing to do with the observation that the roots of his realistic conception of man are to be found in the Christian-creatural tradition’ (italics ours)?117 Let’s again explore the definition of figura: ‘a connection between two events or persons in such a way that the first signifies not only itself but also the second, while the second involves or fulfills the first’118. Could the Jew, Erich Auerbach, no matter how well assimilated into gentile society, avoid thinking of the Passover dinner?119 A dinner which depicts the drawing closer to the only true God who totally transcends mundanity; a drawing closer of God to man so as to break man’s bondage to mundane, natural powers. A reenactment of history which takes place every year in each family, in connection to that other event of the first Passover: within 117 E, 306; It 2, 55; G, 291: ‘die Frage nach seinem religiösen bekenntnis, die ich übrigens für müßig halte, hat mit der Feststellung, daß die Wurzeln seiner realistischen Anschauung des Menschen im Christlich-Kreatürlichen liegen, nichts zu tun’. Said (‘Introduction’, xvii), affirms that ‘Auerbach’s Jewishness is something one can only speculate about since, in his usually reticent way, he does not refer to it directly in Mimesis’; nevertheless he observes: ‘It is not hard to detect a combination of pride and distance as he describes the emergence of Christianity in the ancient world as the product of prodigious missionary work undertaken by the apostle Paul, a diasporic Jew converted to Christ’ (ibid., xvii). On Auerbach’s Jewishness, see Martin Treml, ‘Auerbachs imaginäre jüdische Orte’, in Barck/Treml (ed.), Erich Auerbach, 230–251, on 236, who observes: ‘Was war ihm Judentum? Nicht mehr als dem Großteil seiner Zeitgenossen’. 118 E, 73; It 1, 83; G, 77ff. 119 An explicit reference to the Christian Pascha as the best evidence for the figural representation in Fg, 53–4 = Fi, 214–15: ‘Die Figuren […] weisen auf etwas zu Deutendes, das zwar in der praktischen Zukunft erfüllt werden wird, aber in der Vorsehung Gottes, in der kein Unterschied der Zeiten ist, stets schon erfüllt vorliegt; dies Ewige ist schon in ihnen figuriert, und so sind sowohl vorläufig-fragmentärische als auch verhüllte jederzeitliche Wirklichkeit. Das wird besonders augenfällig im Sakrament des Opfers, im Abendmahl, dem pascha nostrum, das figura Christi ist’ (ours italics).

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history, but also beyond history.120 A dinner where you are invited to propose a narrative that starts from the evidence that lies on the table (epistemologically, a sort of morphology): a bowl with the salt water recalls and signifies (as a figure) the tears and the Red Sea, the drops of red wine recall the amount of risk which each participant in the dinner takes upon himself; and every participant is reminded of the fact that, as the Passover Seder states, only for a wicked man does the divine plan concern exclusively a separate ‘other’, without involving a creatural link concerning the richness of the experience of each and every participant, forever and ever.

Morphology and/or redemption Narrative and morphology: for a long time, Carlo Ginzburg made the relationship between these two terms the core of his research.121 In his 1979 essay ‘Clues’, the birth of the relationship between history and narrative was hypothetically attributed to the ancient customs of our Neolithic ancestors: the light of human reason had shone long before the Greek ‘anticipations’. This hypothesis could present some formal similarities with the texts of Benjamin and Auerbach that we have discussed here. The possibility of a historical (horizontal) narrative is based on morphology (Auerbach would have said: ‘vertical links’;122 and Benjamin, ‘redemption’).123 Morphology is a viewpoint apparently far removed from the 120 See again Benjamin, ‘Destino e carattere’, 452, where he affirms that the hypothesis of a certain ‘being within the present’ of the future may be regarded as coherent with the concept of the future in itself. 121 An evident core from at least 1979 – cf. Carlo Ginzburg, ‘Spie. Radici di un paradigma indiziario’, in Ginzburg, Carlo, Miti, emblemi, spie. Morfologia e storia (Torino: Einaudi, 1986) 158–209 – to the present, cf. Carlo Ginzburg, ‘Le forbici di Warburg’, in Catoni, Maria L./Ginzburg, Carlo/Giuliani, Luca et al., Tre figure. Achille, Meleagro, Cristo (Milano: Feltrinelli, 2013) 109–32. His interest in Auerbach’s (cultural) theory appears also in his recent Paura reverenza terrore. Cinque saggi di iconografia politica (Milano: Adelphi, 2015), 93–4: ‘Mimesis […] è costruito sulla tensione […] tra un’idea di gerarchia stilistica (e sociale) ereditata dall’antichità classica e il sovvertimento di quella idea da parte del cristianesimo’; it is worth noting that the criticism of ‘rigidity’ seen as a lack of humanity appears also, without a reference to Auerbach, within the discussion about Picasso’s Guernica: the author of that criticism (directed against Stravinsky’s ‘neoclassicism’) was a close friend of the Auerbachs: Marc Bloch (ibid., 181). 122 E, 194; It 1, 211: ‘ogni fenomeno terrestre, tramite un gran numero di fili verticali è immediatamente riferito al piano di salvezza della provvidenza’; G, 188–9: ‘es ist also jede irdische Erscheinung, durch eine Fülle vertikaler Verbindungen, unmittelbar auf den Heilsplan der Vorsehung bezogen’. 123 I suggest that a narrative based only on horizontal links (in the sense of Benjamin) could be expressed by the famous quotation of the Flaubertian method in Benjamin’s ‘Thesen’: ‘Combien il a fallu être triste pour ressusciter Carthage’, see ‘Sul concetto di storia’, in Benjamin, Opere complete, vol. 7 Scritti 1938–1940 (2006), 483–93, on 486.

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day-by-day historicity of human experience; a viewpoint which is however necessary in order to perceive it without ‘conceptual encrustations’. Is it possible to explore the course marked out by the relationships between figura and morphology further?

Bibliography Auerbach, Erich, ‘Zur Dante-Feier’, in Barck, Karl-Heinz/Treml, Martin (ed.), Erich Auerbach. Geschichte und Aktualität eines europäischen Philologen (Berlin: Kadmos, 2007) 407–9. Auerbach, Erich, ‘Figura’, Archivum Romanicum 22 (1938) 436–89 [= D]. Auerbach, Erich, ‘Figura’, in Auerbach, Erich, Neue Dantestudien (Istanbul, 1944) 11–71 [= Fg]. Auerbach, Erich, Mimesis. Dargestellte Wirklichkeit in der Abenländischen Literatur. Eine Geschichte des abendländischen Realismus als Ausdruck der Wandlungen in der Selbstanschauung des Menschen (Bern: A. Francke, 1946) [= G]. Auerbach, Erich, Mimesis. Il realismo nella letteratura occidentale (2 vols.; Torino: Einaudi, 1956) [= It 1–2]. Auerbach, Erich, Figura (New York: Meridian Books, 1959). Auerbach, Erich, Dante Poet of the Secular World (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1961). Auerbach, Erich, Mimesis. The Representation of Reality in Western Literature (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 21968). Auerbach, Erich, Studi su Dante, edited by Della Terza, Dante (Milano: Feltrinelli, 2012). Auerbach, Erich, ‘Figura’, in Auerbach, Erich, Studi su Dante, edited by Della Terza, Dante (Milano: Feltrinelli, 2012) 176–226 [= Fi]. Auerbach, Erich, ‘Dante poeta del mondo terreno’, in Auerbach, Erich, Studi su Dante, edited by Della Terza, Dante (Milano: Feltrinelli, 2012) 1–161. Auerbach, Erich, Mimesis. The Representation of Reality in Western Literature (Princeton/ Oxford: Princeton University Press, 2013) [= E]. Bahti, Timothy, Allegories of History (Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1992). Barck, Karl-Heinz/Treml, Martin (ed.), Erich Auerbach. Geschichte und Aktualität eines europäischen Philologen (Berlin: Kadmos, 2007). Barck, Karl-Heinz/Treml, Martin, ‘Einleitung: Erich Auerbachs Philologie als Kulturwissenschaft’, in Barck, Karl-Heinz/Treml, Martin (ed.), Erich Auerbach. Geschichte und Aktualität eines europäischen Philologen (Berlin: Kadmos, 2007) 9–29. Benjamin, Walter, ‘Destino e carattere’, in Benjamin, Walter, Opere complete, edited by Tiedemann, Rolf/Schweppenhäuser, Hermann/Ganni, Enrico (9 vols.; Torino: Einaudi, 2001–14) vol. 1 Scritti 1906–1922 (2008), 452–8. Benjamin, Walter, ‘Sul concetto di storia’, in Benjamin, Walter, Opere complete, edited by Tiedemann, Rolf/Schweppenhäuser, Hermann/Ganni, Enrico (9 vols.; Torino: Einaudi, 2001–14) vol. 7 Scritti 1938–1940 (2006), 483–93. Benjamin, Walter, Gesammelte Schriften, edited by Tiedemann, Rolf/Schweppenhäuser, Hermann (7 vols.; Frankfurt a.M.: Suhrkamp, 1977).

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Benjamin, Walter, Opere complete, edited by Tiedemann, Rolf/Schweppenhäuser, Hermann/Ganni, Enrico (9 vols.; Torino: Einaudi, 2001–14). Bianchi, Enzo, Ricominciare. Nell’anima, nella chiesa, nel mondo (Casale Monferrato: Marietti, 1991). Boyarin, Daniel, Carnal Israel (Berkeley/Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1993). Dawson, John D., Christian Figural Reading and the Fashioning of Identity (Berkeley/Los Angeles: University of California Press, 2001). Faber, Richard, ‘Humilitas sive sublimitas. Erich Auerbachs Literaturreligionssoziologie im Kontext moderner Marcionismus’, in Barck, Karl-Heinz/Treml, Martin (ed.), Erich Auerbach. Geschichte und Aktualität eines europäischen Philologen (Berlin: Kadmos, 2007) 323–337. Faber, Richard, Politische Dämonologie: über modernen Marcionismus (Würzburg: Königshausen und Neumann, 2006). Faber, Richard, ‘Humilitas sive sublimitas. Erich Auerbachs Literatursoziologie im Kontext modernen Marcionismus’, in Barck, Karl-Heinz/Treml, Martin (ed.), Erich Auerbach. Geschichte und Aktualität eines europäischen Philologen (Berlin: Kadmos, 2007) 323–40. Ginzburg, Carlo, ‘Auerbach und Dante: Eine Verlaufbahn’, in Barck, Karl-Heinz/Treml, Martin (ed.), Erich Auerbach. Geschichte und Aktualität eines europäischen Philologen (Berlin: Kadmos, 2007) 33–45. Ginzburg, Carlo, ‘Ecce. Sulle radici scritturali dell’immagine di culto cristiana’, in Ginzburg, Carlo, Occhiacci di legno (Milano: Feltrinelli, 1998) 100–17. Ginzburg, Carlo, ‘Le forbici di Warburg’, in Catoni, Maria L./Ginzburg, Carlo/Giuliani, Luca et al., Tre figure. Achille, Meleagro, Cristo (Milano: Feltrinelli, 2013) 109–32. Ginzburg, Carlo, ‘Spie. Radici di un paradigma indiziario’, in Ginzburg, Carlo, Miti, emblemi, spie. Morfologia e storia (Torino: Einaudi, 1986) 158–209. Ginzburg, Carlo, Occhiacci di legno (Milano: Feltrinelli, 1998). Ginzburg, Carlo, Paura reverenza terrore. Cinque saggi di iconografia politica (Milano: Adelphi, 2015). Mann, Paul, ‘The Translator’s Voice: An Interview with Richard Howard’, Translation Review 9 (1982) 5–15, available at http://translation.utdallas.edu/Interviews/Richard HowardTR_9.html [1. 10. 2018]. Meur, Diane, ‘Auerbach und Vico: Die unausgesprochene Auseinandersetzung’, in Barck, Karl-Heinz/Treml, Martin (ed.), Erich Auerbach. Geschichte und Aktualität eines europäischen Philologen (Berlin: Kadmos, 2007) 57–71. Morrison, Karl F., The Mimetic Tradition of Reform in the West (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1982). Newman, Jane O., ‘Nicht am “falschen Ort”: Saids, Auerbach und die “neue” Komparatistik’, in Barck, Karl-Heinz/Treml, Martin (ed.), Erich Auerbach. Geschichte und Aktualität eines europäischen Philologen (Berlin: Kadmos, 2007) 341–56. Said, Edward W., ‘Introduction’, in Auerbach, Erich, Mimesis. The Representation of Reality in Western Literature (Princeton/Oxford: Princeton University Press, 2013) ix– xxxii. Shestov, Lev I., Athens and Jerusalem (Athens, OH: Ohio University Press, 1966). Treml, Martin, ‘Auerbachs imaginäre jüdische Orte’, in Barck, Karl-Heinz/Treml, Martin (ed.), Erich Auerbach. Geschichte und Aktualität eines europäischen Philologen (Berlin: Kadmos, 2007) 230–251.

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Vialon, Martin, ‘Die Stimme Dantes und ihre Resonanz’, in Barck, Karl-Heinz/Treml, Martin (ed.), Erich Auerbach. Geschichte und Aktualität eines europäischen Philologen (Berlin: Kadmos, 2007) 46–56. Vlach, Michael, ‘Defining Supersessionism’, August 2011, available at https://web.archive. org/web/20160309232828/http://www.theologicalstudies.org/resource-library/superses sionism/324-defining-supersessionism [1. 10. 2018].

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Greenblatt’s self-fashioning revisited: the problem(s) of representing a self in the Reformation era. Historical anthropological remarks

Introduction One of the most influential theories dealing with the issue of how the European self has been represented and developed from the age of the Renaissance is the one set forth by Stephen Greenblatt in his well-known book entitled Renaissance Self-Fashioning from More to Shakespeare.1 Although the book was first published more than three decades ago, it has remained the dominant concept of almost all the scholarship concerned with investigating into how early modern religious or humanist identities were articulated and publicly displayed. Furthermore, the term of self-fashioning has been so closely associated with the discourse on, and representations of, the self that even related fields, such as anthropology, have also appropriated it. This is what one would notice, for instance, when perusing the reception of Malinowski’s scandalous diary.2 Yet Greenblatt’s theory, despite its amazingly rich applications,3 remains a typical product of the 1980s, reflecting above all the highly inspiring thoughts of Clifford Geertz’s interpretive anthropology. Since during the last three decades Geertz’s achievements have been subject of a complex criticism, a criticism that has justly revealed contradictions and flaws in this interpretive construction, it remains a questionable choice when applied unconditionally to literary criticism.

1 Stephen Greenblatt, Renaissance Self-Fashioning from More to Shakespeare (Chicago/London: University of Chicago Press, 1980). 2 James Clifford, ‘On Ethnographic Self-Fashioning: Conrad and Malinowski’, in Heller, Thomas C./Sosna, Marton/Welbery, David E. (ed.), Reconstructing Individualism: Autonomy, Individuality, and the Self in Western Thought (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1986) 140– 62, on 143. 3 Muriel McClendon/Joseph Ward/Michael MacDonald (ed.), Protestant Identities. Religion, Society, Self-Fashioning in Post-Reformation England (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1999); Margo Todd, ‘Puritan Self-Fashioning: The Diary of Samuel Ward’, Journal of British Studies 3 (1992) 236–64; John Martin, ‘Inventing Sincerity, Refashioning Prudence: The Discovery of the Individual in Renaissance Europe’, American Historical Review 5 (1997) 1309–42.

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Accordingly, the main task of this paper is to evaluate to what extent the concept of self-fashioning has remained a reliable tool for literary historians in the twenty-first century, especially when confronted with the examination of textual representations of the self: early modern Latin and vernacular diaries, memoirs or even letters often provide a particular representation of the religious self organically embedded in the culture of their times. Whether Greenblatt’s findings about self-fashioning, ensuing from the study of such unusually fertile authors as Marlowe, Spenser, Wyatt, More or Shakespeare, could be directly transposed to the examinations of the average writers or readers of the Reformation era, remains, indeed, a disputable question. This essay elaborates an analogous criticism illustrating my critical reflections with examples from early modern ego-documents. I shall conclude by suggesting that early modern individuals and their selves exhibited in ego-documents require a far more complex historical-anthropological examination than the theoretically and methodologically limited Greenblattian self-fashioning.

New historicism and self-fashioning Originally centred on the works and powerful figure of Stephen Greenblatt, and later on developing further significant perspectives, new historicism imposed itself as one of the most important theoretical paradigms for literary theory deliberately promoted to counter the nihilistic relativism of poststructuralist and postmodernist thinking. Of the range of brilliantly examined topics within Greenblatt’s oeuvre, it seems to me that the concept of self-fashioning has captured most attention. Although Greenblatt published his book dedicated to the issue of self-fashioning precisely in 1980, it is quite clear that this concept had its own notable antecedents in the previous writings of the literary historian. Furthermore, the enterprises carried out after 1980, such as his book examining and reconstructing Shakespeare’s life,4 have also made their own particular contribution to the development of this concept. Therefore, any attempt to describe the emergence of the concept of self-fashioning requires, in my opinion, a thorough survey of Greenblatt’s writings from the late 1970s to the present time.

4 Stephen Greenblatt, Will in the World: How Shakespeare Became Shakespeare (New York: Norton, 2004).

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The archaeology of self-fashioning The task of this subsection is to consider retrospectively the antecedents and consequences of self-fashioning as a concept and method promoted by Greenblatt in his cultural poetics. However, the first most important work shaping the concept of self-fashioning was the book evaluating the life and deeds of Sir Walter Raleigh (1552–1618), one that provided a contextual examination focussing on the Renaissance man and some of the potential roles he allegedly performed in early modern society and culture.5 Prior to the book published in 1980 containing the famous definition of self-fashioning, this book, after deciphering the intricacies of Raleigh’s life, set forth the formulation of some foregoing concepts, such as role playing, that constituted relevant antecedents for what was defined later as self-fashioning. Identifying Raleigh as an individual suffering from histrionic sensitivity, further key terms such as dramatic sense of life, self-dramatisation6 vividly carved the profile of the Renaissance individual fascinated by self-dramatisation at moments of crisis. Greenblatt depicted Raleigh’s personality as ‘ranging from a deliberate and prearranged performance to an all but unconscious fashioning of the self ’.7 The central concept Greenblatt relied on when examining Raleigh’s identity was the role, a term meant ‘to designate a variety of related aspects of Raleigh’s personality and behaviour’.8 According to Greenblatt’s references, he borrowed the term from the discourse of French social psychology, in particular, from Anne-Marie RocheblaveSpenlé’s writings. In her influential book, after surveying the most important precursors from the fields of sociology and psychology,9 the French author established that the rich multitude of approaches could be synthetised in a definition accommodated to the criteria of social group, intersubjectivity and personality.10 Accordingly, she defined the concept of role as an ‘organised pattern of conducts related to a certain position of the individual undertaken in an interactional context’. In addition, she distinguished three major roles, such as the social, dramatic and the personal ones.11 The role at the level of the personality, as she explained it, could be further refined as the equivalent of an interiorised pattern and habit.12 Furthermore, she suggested that the interaction 5 Stephen Greenblatt, Sir Walter Raleigh. The Renaissance Man and His Roles (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1973). 6 Ibid., 23, 26. 7 Ibid., 9. 8 Ibid. 9 Anne-Marie Rocheblave-Spenlé, La notion de rôle en psychologie sociale (Paris: Presses universitaires de France, 21969), 5–97. 10 Ibid., 145. 11 Ibid., 172. 12 Ibid., 134–41.

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between the role and the imagination fostered the individual predisposition to play a part, or perform a certain role,13 which comes very close to Greenblatt’s idea of self-fashioning. Although Greenblatt used the term of self-fashioning in his earlier works, the concept was defined in 1980 and reads like this: […] it describes the practice of parents and teachers; it is linked to manners or demeanour, particularly that of elite; it may suggest hypocrisy or deception, an adherence to mere outward ceremony; it suggests representation of one’s nature or intention in speech or actions […] it invariably crosses the boundaries between the creations of literary characters, the shaping of one’s own identity.14

This definition was complemented with ten further theses intended to elaborate the process of self-fashioning envisaged by Greenblatt and exemplified by the cases of such famous authors as Marlowe, Spenser, Wyatt, More, and Shakespeare.15 As Mark Robson aptly remarks, Greenblatt was interested in studying the constructed character of human identity.16 He was preoccupied, as Robson further observes, with revealing those mechanisms whereby cultural structures and codes shaped Renaissance identities, for human identity, according to Greenblatt, is undoubtedly a product of culture, though culture is produced by humans. It is this ‘dialectical sense of production’, Robson explains, that functions as a governing principle in the process of Renaissance self-fashioning designed by Greenblatt.17 It has become clear by now that Greenblatt’s book, together with the concept of self-fashioning, bears the signs of the determining influence of the symbolic or interpretive anthropology associated with the works of Clifford Geertz, a former colleague and famous contemporary of Greenblatt. Furthermore, Greenblatt has openly admitted the impact of this discipline and interpretive practice hallmarked by Geertz’s name.18 In a later essay, saluting the achievements of Geertz as an anthropologist, Greenblatt praised the application of interpretive anthropology to literary criticism.19 This came as an echo to Geertz’s conviction that cultural symbolism as a kind of textuality demands hermeneutical interpretation. Thus, Greenblatt’s cultural poetics attempted to render to the actual practice of literary criticism the most important findings and key concepts of Geertzian anthropology such as thick description, deep play, native’s point of 13 14 15 16 17 18 19

Ibid., 145. Greenblatt, Renaissance Self-Fashioning, 2–3. Ibid., 9. Mark Robson, Stephen Greenblatt (London: Routledge, 2008), 53. Ibid., 56. Greenblatt, Renaissance Self-Fashioning, 255. Stephen Greenblatt, ‘The Touch of the Real’, Representations 59 (1997), special issue The Fate of ‘Culture’: Geertz and Beyond, 14–29, on 16–17, 26.

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view, and local knowledge.20 However, Greenblatt’s most significant thesis of Geertzian anthropological inspiration is the one claiming that one could, or would, ‘speak to the dead’. The first utterance of this claim was expressed in the opening line to the volume written by Greenblatt titled Shakespearian Negotiations.21 Yet this thesis can be functional solely within the methodological context of Geertz’s interpretive anthropology. Indeed, Geertz’s theory asserting that man continually builds up social reality by using the inherent symbolism of culture, widely reverberated in the works of his contemporaries. However, Geertz laid the foundations of an anthropology that integrated the hermeneutic tradition, especially its interpretive model, that is to say, the hermeneutic circle. The concept, originally promoted by Wilhelm Dilthey, in Geertz’s discourse has become the anthropologist’s tool for understanding cultural otherness. Geertz claimed that the application of the localglobal dialectics of the hermeneutical circle could function as a genuine instrument for ethnographic interpretation. Moreover, he suggested that in this way the anthropologist could access local knowledge, that is, the reading of reality from the native’s point of view.22 Thus Geertz intended to answer the question as to how anthropological knowledge of the way natives thought, felt, and perceived might be possible.23 Notwithstanding the criticism formulated by anthropologists regarding Geertz’s theoretical programme,24 historians gladly embraced the main concepts of Geertzian anthropology and rapidly applied them during the 1980s. Consequently, the ‘thick description’25 of a multicultural encounter, or the assessment of the Balinese cockfight as ‘deep play’,26 completed by Geertz’s predisposition to favour microscopic approach27 in ethnographic description, served as a valid methodological pattern for many representatives of other disciplines, and Greenblatt, needless to say, was no exception: the method of thick description, as Geertz had envisaged it, emphasised the task of the anthropologist to look for several entangled or ignored cultural contexts and equate the ethnographical interpretation with the practice of text interpretation. It is this method that arguably constituted the most important antecedent of what Greenblatt 20 Ibid., 18–20. 21 Stephen Greenblatt, Shakespearian Negotiations (Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1988), 1. 22 Clifford Geertz, Local Knowledge. Further Essays in Interpretive Anthropology (New York: Basic Books, 1983), 55–70. 23 Ibid., 56. 24 Paul Shankman, ‘The Thick and the Thin: On the Interpretive Theoretical Program of Clifford Geertz’, Current Anthropology 25/3 (1984) 261–80. 25 Clifford Geertz, The Interpretation of Cultures (London: Fontana Press, 21993), 3–31. 26 Ibid., 412–53. 27 Ibid., 23.

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described as ‘compression’ and ‘foveation’ in the interpretive act of literary criticism.28 At the same time, this is the most relevant methodological meeting point between interpretive anthropology and new historicism represented by Geertz’s anthropological symbolism and Greenblatt’s cultural poetics. Be that as it may, one should not ignore that a thorough criticism of the Geertzian interpretive pattern and methodology has been provided by the representatives of the so called Writing Culture.29 For instance, in his essay published in the notorious Writing Culture volume, Vincent Crapanzano aimed to reveal the basically rhetorical and literally articulated ethnographic account.30 In order to unmask the ethnographer, he exhibited a reassessment and comparison of three texts as descriptions, written by George Caitlin, Goethe and Clifford Geertz. Moreover, he deconstructed, somewhat daringly, the key text of the deep play concept, the famous description of the Balinese cockfight.31 He argued that despite his phenomenological-hermeneutical pretensions, Geertz did not succeed in revealing an understanding of the native, from the native’s point of view. This failure, according to him, was due to the fact that Geertz projected upon an alien cultural phenomenon some totally inadequate conceptions such as art or everyday experience, and so on. Furthermore, Geertz’s concern with deciphering the symbolic meaning of the cockfight when referring to Balinese society was a basically unsuccessful attempt and resulted only in ‘the constructed understanding of a constructed native’s constructed point of view’.32 This radical criticism refuting Geertz’s assertion that an anthropologist could acquire or assimilate the native’s point of view also produced far reaching consequences on various fields other than anthropology, for this thesis, applied to history, translates as the historian’s creed to perform a total reconstruction of past experiences. In a similar way, Greenblatt’s methodological proposal to hear the voices of the dead can hardly be accepted as an expression of some kind of absolute understanding dissolving the obstructive barriers of time and cultural otherness. This type of total and absolute understanding of a text, an experience or any cultural-social phenomenon simply seems improbable as it would be a hermeneutical and anthropological impossibility. This is why historical anthropology prefers to avoid an unconditional application of Geertzian anthropology to historical enquiry and historical writing.33 28 Greenblatt, ‘The Touch of the Real’, 17–19. 29 James Clifford/George E. Marcus (ed.), Writing Culture: The Poetics and Politics of Ethnography (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1986). 30 Vincent Crapanzano, ‘Hermes’ Dilemma: The Making of Subversion on Ethnographic Description’, in Clifford/Marcus (ed.), Writing Culture, 51–76. 31 Ibid., 68–76. 32 Ibid., 74. 33 Robert Scribner, ‘Historical Anthropology of Early Modern Europe’, in Hsia, R. Po-chia/

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Nonetheless, the significance of Greenblatt’s self-fashioning is not to be dismissed entirely for it seems to be a kind of historical anthropology urging for a contextual explanation, albeit with some methodological and theoretical contingencies. Moreover, Greenblatt somehow stubbornly refused34 to accept the radical criticism formulated by Geertz’s fellow anthropologists or historians,35 for he continued to follow the same methodological approach. In hearing the voices of the dead, for instance Shakespeare’s voice, he insisted on vindicating an almost absolute access to that native’s point of view, as he engaged in reconstructing Shakespeare’s mental world taking the plays and sonnets as biographical documents.36 Not possessing any control-sources referring to Shakespeare’s private life, or any so-called ego-documents revealing Shakespeare’s mental world and spirituality, Greenblatt, rather boldly, was keen to examine the hidden intentions, feelings, memories, and private experiences allegedly encoded in Shakespeare’s works. Thus, in Greenblatt’s vision the oeuvre became a cryptogram of the life story and, moreover, the major source of Shakespeare’s private life. Two further significant flaws in Greenblatt’s concept should be mentioned here. Self-fashioning had been conceived as a rather exclusivist enterprise, as it had clearly been tailored to the performances of the early modern elite, especially to those who produced an impressive number of written texts. Furthermore, selffashioning, as an attempt to fathom the constructed features of human identity, focussed solely upon the soul, the mind and the intellect. Greenblatt utterly ignored the importance of body and its representational values or functions when examining early modern identities. Indeed, he seemed to lose sight of the somatic turn and the historiographical significance of body history.37 Con-

34 35 36

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Scribner, Robert (ed.), Problems in the Historical Anthropology of Early Modern Europe (Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz Verlag, 1997) 10–34, on 20–2. Greenblatt, ‘The Touch of the Real’, 14. William H. Sewell, ‘Geertz, Cultural Systems, and History: from Synchrony to Transformation’, Representations 3 (1997) 35–55, on 46–8. Greenblatt, Will in the World, 254–5. Greenblatt seemed to be so preoccupied with this idea that he wrote a whole chapter with a similar title (ibid., 288–322). In one of his later books, revealing the fascinating story of the book-hunter Poggio and the recovery of Lucretius’s De rerum natura, he revisited this thesis, while contemplating the resurrection of ancient authors; see Stephen Greenblatt, The Swerve. How the World Became Modern (New York: Norton, 2011), 206–7. For the historiographical significance of body history or what has lately been referred to as somatic turn, see: Mary Douglas, Natural Symbol: Explorations in Cosmology (London/New York: Routledge, 21996); Norbert Elias, Civilizing Process (Oxford: Blackwell, 1994); Jacques Le Goff/Nicolas Truong (ed.), Il corpo nel Medioevo (Roma/Bari: Laterza, 2007); Emily Martin, ‘The End of the Body?’, in Moore, Henrietta L./Sanders, Todd (ed.), Anthropology in Theory. Issues in Epistemology (Malden: Blackwell, 2006) 336–47; Marcel Mauss, Sociology and Psychology. Essays (London/Boston: Routledge, 1979); Roy Porter, ‘History of the Body’, in Burke, Peter (ed.), New Perspectives on Historical Writing (Cambridge: Polity Press, 1991)

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sequently, I shall provide a case study of self-fashioning complemented with the aforementioned critical considerations. In order to create a proper contrast between Greenblatt’s theory and my complemented version, I shall refer to the process of self-fashioning as identity performance. My focus will concentrate on the examination of some narrative representations of an early modern individual’s self, including corporeal references as well, so that I may exemplify and confirm the validity of the criticism I have formulated. I shall take as my main source the autobiography and prayer book of the chancellor of Transylvania, Count Miklós Bethlen, one of those rare early modern Hungarian texts that are also available in English.38

Application: the tragic life of Count Miklós Bethlen After providing a survey of how self-fashioning developed in Greenblatt’s interpretive practice, also briefly referring to the tangencies with Geertz’s anthropology, I formulated a criticism regarding Greenblatt’s habit of producing historical explanation in terms of both historiography and hermeneutics. This paragraph proposes a case study that exemplifies the aforementioned criticism with the declared aim to prove that historical anthropology as a contextual examination brings about a more refined understanding of identity performance than Greenblatt’s self-fashioning. However, first of all, I shall introduce the most necessary historical contexts for the early modern case examined. The life and tragic destiny of Count Miklós Bethlen (1642–1716) coincided with the major changes and the unavoidable decline of the Principality of Transylvania, a haunting series of unfortunate events from the loss of independence to the Habsburg invasion and occupation. However, by the time Bethlen started his studies in the 1650s, a Calvinist, Puritan-oriented religious culture and educational system had been developing in the Principality of Transylvania. Under the guidance of, first, Pál Keresztúri, a supporter of Comenius’s pedagogy, and then János Apáczai Csere, a committed follower of Alsted’s encyclopaedism, Bethlen assimilated an up-to-date set of knowledge centred upon Ramist dialectics incorporated into the Puritan theological teaching of Ames and Perkins. Bethlen was also granted an impressive tour throughout Europe, during which he not only assimilated new knowledge but 206–32; Daniel Punday, Narrative Bodies: Toward a Corporeal Narratology (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2003); Roger Cooter, ‘The Turn of the Body: History and the Politics of the Corporeal’, Arbor 5/6 (2010) 393–405; Giuseppe Veltri/Maria Diemling (ed.), The Jewish Body. Corporeality, Society, and Identity in the Renaissance and Early Modern Period (Leiden/ Boston: Brill, 2009). 38 Miklós Bethlen, The Autobiography of Miklós Bethlen (London/New York: Kegan Paul, 2004).

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also fulfilled some political missions, consisting mainly in exchanging information and delivering letters. All things considered, Bethlen commenced his adulthood and public service soundly prepared, with Puritan piety inculcated in his soul, and with an encyclopaedic knowledge assimilated and stored in his mind. Although he intensely relied on this outstanding education during his political career, he did not manage to avoid the unfortunate and sad ending to both his public service and his life.39 The tragic course of his life transformed his destiny, in the eyes of his contemporaries, into one of the most significant examples of misfortune for it must have been quite a sensation to have seen the chancellor of Transylvania charged with high treason and imprisoned. Although initially sentenced to death, Bethlen was never executed but kept in prison in Vienna until the end of his life. The allegedly most brilliant mind and statesman of Transylvania died on 27 October 1716 in total isolation and neglect. Not even a single portrait depicting him survived for succeeding generations, although he mentioned in his autobiography that he had ordered a smaller and larger one from a painter while in Vienna in 1665.40 The only image or representation left to posterity is the unusually meticulous description of himself recorded in his autobiography and partially in his prayer book.41

Miklós Bethlen’s identity performance When reading Bethlen’s account of his life, one cannot possibly miss the striking sincerity of his discourse, which does not spare the author himself and seemingly unfolds all those intimate emotional, spiritual and physical details of what could be defined as a private life. Indeed, the prayer book and the autobiography of Miklós Bethlen, both written between 1708 and 1710, amaze the reader with a scrupulous, all-comprehensive total textual representation of both his body and soul. The self in Bethlen’s case, thanks to the remarkably detailed description of himself, seems to me a narrative attempt to reveal and share everything confined within the limits of the human condition, ranging from the confession of his spiritual and pious intimacies to the most graphic details of the physiological functioning of his body. The narrative account seems to be preoccupied with satisfying the most daring curiosity of his contemporary and posthumous readership. This unprecedented narrative technique and identity performance 39 Zsombor Tóth, ‘A Man for All Seasons: Exile, Suffering, and Martyrdom in the Autobiography of Miklós Bethlen’, Hungarian Studies 26 (2012) 273–82, on 275. 40 Bethlen, Autobiography, 217. 41 Tóth, ‘A Man for All Seasons’, 276.

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powerfully expressed in both his prayer book and autobiography constituted such a unique discourse in early modern Hungarian literature that some of the learned interpreters of Bethlen’s texts suggested that the chancellor had imitated Montaigne and his specific discourse, as is superbly displayed in his Essais. Although this claim has never been convincingly confirmed, Bethlen’s discourse might seem to follow the main poetical and narrative intentions asserted by Montaigne in the opening to his Essais, when announcing that he himself constituted the subject matter of his book: ‘Ainsi, lecteur, je suis moy-mesmes la matière de mon livre’.42 Furthermore, while narrating his life, Bethlen often came close to the limits of absolute sincerity, reminding his readership again of Montaigne and his promise to remain totally naked (‘tout nud’) before his readers.43 Despite all these similarities, let alone the tempting presupposition that Bethlen might have read one of the greatest early modern authors, we have to acknowledge that Bethlen’s source of imitation was related to a rather different tradition and clearly not to the literary heritage of the French moralists or Montaigne himself, for Montaigne’s Hungarian reception commenced only in the early nineteenth century.44

The puritan contexts of Bethlen’s identity performance Having established the relevant historical and scholarly contexts of Bethlen’s case, I shall proceed to the historical-anthropological examination of how he fashioned a self in his ego-documents. Recent Hungarian scholarship on Bethlen has amply reconsidered some of its outdated positions, striving for a more reliable assessment of the oeuvre and historical personality of the chancellor. This turning point in the scholarship coincided with the emergence of the study of Hungarian Puritanism, a new perspective that fostered a different interpretation of Bethlen’s oeuvre. Instead of persisting with the arguable parallel or even textual contaminations between Montaigne’s Essais and Bethlen’s autobiography, the influence of the Puritan paradigm, with its theological, intellectual and literary consequences, served as the starting point for a more reliable evaluation of Bethlen’s oeuvre.45 Furthermore, the publication of his correspondence 42 Michel Montaigne, Les Essais (Bruges: Gallimard/Bibliothèque de la Pléiade, 1950), 25. 43 Ibid. 44 Zsombor Tóth, ‘Montaigne és Bethlen (?): “Meztelen” (“tout nud”) moralista “magyar köntösben”’, ItK 5–6 (2001) 600–17, on 601. 45 Zsombor Tóth, A koronatanú: Bethlen Miklós (Debrecen: Kossuth Lajos University Press, 2007); Zsombor Tóth, ‘Liminalitás és emlékirat-irodalom. Bethlen Miklós esete’, in Nyerges, Judit/Császtvay, Tünde (ed.), Szolgálatomat ajánlom a 60 éves Jankovics Józsefnek (Budapest: Balassi Kiadó, 2009) 448–57; Tóth, ‘A Man for All Seasons’.

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containing some seven hundred letters,46 has also contributed to unravelling the overlapping cultural, confessional and political contexts of Bethlen’s life and texts. The extant and finally accessible ego-documents related to those texts in which Bethlen was concerned with displaying a complex identity seem to confirm and further reassert that the Puritan practice of piety produced a twofold impact upon the chancellor. First of all, it gave him a basic identity pattern, the role of the Puritan godly believer, then, as a consequence of this Puritan commitment, bestowed on Bethlen a narrative pattern that consisted in imitating the Puritan practice of consulting one’s conscience and confessing all one’s sins or sinful thoughts. Thus Bethlen’s retrospective narrative of the past experiences of his life corresponded to the theological and homiletic standards of Puritan confession and penitence. The casus conscientiae or case of conscience was that particular technique of the Puritan practice of piety that functioned as the main narrative generator for producing textual representations of past events along with Bethlen’s self. Bethlen defined conscience as ‘the representative of God within a man’ and he also added that its judgements ‘may be loving or laudatory or unloving and condemnatory, but they are always just’.47 Bethlen’s views expressed in his autobiography as an explanation for his explicit account of his private life had their origin in Puritan theology, particularly in the teachings of William Ames. The Puritan divine dedicated a whole book to cases of conscience, and his definition of conscience reads like this: ‘Conscientia humana est judicium hominis de semetipso, prout subjicitur judicio Dei’.48 In addition, Ames also affixes the definition of casus conscientiae: ‘Casus conscientiae est questio practica, de qua conscientia potest dubitare’.49 These theologically founded Puritan rules of practising piety also involve homiletics as they impose a particular way of reflecting on life and listen to the unbiased, outspoken, and sometimes unscrupulous judgement of conscience, one that could not be contaminated by human peccability. Accordingly, any attempt of transposing into oral or written narratives the experiences of the believer’s life had to follow strictly the findings of this inner and spiritual selfexamination. Furthermore, the narratives articulated according to this particular homiletics had to be of unconditional overtness as they were incorporated into the very personal act of confessing in front of God. It is this particular context, I believe, that evinces Bethlen’s preoccupation with transforming the Puritanminded spiritual ‘routine’ into the standard procedure of narrating his life and 46 47 48 49

József Jankovics (ed.), Bethlen Miklós levelei (Budapest: Akadémiai Kiadó, 1987). Bethlen, Autobiography, 28. William Ames, De conscientia et ejus jure, vel casibus libri quinque (Debrecen, 1685), 1. Ibid., 47.

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fashioning his self, that is to say of performing his identity. In doing so, Bethlen displayed an absolute sincerity that, despite its poetically conceived features, resembles more a plain confession than a carefully designed narrative about the course of his life. The most likely explanation for this is that Bethlen may have closely observed Ames’s teaching on sinceritas, which imposed this type of disarmingly outspoken discourse. It is worth revisiting one of the key directives Ames addressed to his readership: ‘Ut nihil omittat, aut negligat, quod spectat ad perfectionem’.50 It is possible to establish that the Puritan theological and homiletical tradition had well facilitated Bethlen’s attempt to display and perform the dominant identity patterns popular amongst the Calvinist elite, such as the roles of the godly believer, the persecuted Puritan, and the martyr or the prophet of the persecuted true church and beloved fatherland. These roles were accessible for Bethlen in the Hungarian, Latin or English texts of Puritan origin or affiliation that circulated in early modern Hungary. Accordingly, one will immediately notice that, both in his prayer book and his autobiography, Bethlen depicted his life with the clear intention to demonstrate that his persecutions and sufferings were heroically undertaken acts of martyrdom. Bethlen’s understanding of Calvinist martyrdom – besides the Puritan classics, Ames and Perkins, he had certainly read – was further underpinned by Hungarian Puritan teachings. István Nagy Szo˝nyi (1632–1709), himself a victim of religious persecution during the 1670s, wrote the very first Hungarian martyrology, inspired partly by his own experiences.51 The book, published in 1675, may have well entered Bethlen’s library. All things considered, Szo˝nyi’s definition of martyrdom unmistakably resounded in Bethlen’s self-fashioning, for it is very clear that they shared the same convictions. Szo˝nyi claimed that ‘all those who are patiently suffering their afflictions are martyrs’.52 This motif of the suffering endured with patience, frequently recurring in Bethlen’s discourse, was meant to ease his liminality and point out his very special condition and status. Accordingly, Bethlen seemed to respect Szo˝nyi’s argumentation about Calvinist martyrdom intimately, for when he equated his imprisonment with a martyrdom suffered for the church and fatherland, he might have relied on Szo˝nyi’s view in his assertion that ‘Martyrs are those persons who bear witness to Justice, suffered prison or any kind of afflictions, even 50 Ibid., 110. 51 István Nagy Szo˝nyi, Mártírok Coronája (Debrecen, 1675). For a detailed assessement of Szo˝nyi’s Calvinist martirology see Zsombor Tóth, ‘Calvinian Anthropology and the Early Modern Hungarian Devotion: The Case of István Nagy Szo˝nyi, the First Hungarian Martyrologist’, in Eusterschulte, Anne/Wälzholz, Hannah (ed.), Anthropological Reformations – Anthropology in the Era of Reformation (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2015) 415–28. 52 Szo˝nyi, Mártírok Coronája, 5.

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though they were not killed’.53 Bethlen’s conviction of his being a martyr directly ensued from his creed of being chosen, a homo electus.54

Identity performance and body history We have seen that a contextualising examination of Bethlen’s identity performance brought about the emergence of a mainly spiritual profile nurtured by Puritan theological and homiletical traditions. While reiterating the assertion that Bethlen’s self-portrait stems first of all from a Calvinist and Puritan theological and homiletical tradition, and not from the Stoic and Sceptic discourse of the French moralists, one still has to admit that this is only a partial assessment of Bethlen’s exhaustive account of his carefully fabricated self. For, despite its apparent reliability, the Puritan context contributes, first of all, to the discovery of a prevailingly spiritual self, somehow neglecting the detailed body history entangled and incorporated into narratives of the various life experiences. It seems plausible that an exploratory survey and reinterpretation of those passages insisting with references to the body or its functioning could complement our understanding of Bethlen’s complex identity performance. As the following passage testifies, Bethlen was determined to produce an all-encompassing account of his human condition, not neglecting the corporeal reality of his everyday existence. This intention rendered a spectacularly exhaustive description of his body: My stature was neither tall, nor short, but honourably between the two, my face longish, swarthy, ruddy. In my youth it was conspicuous; suffice it that in my maturity it was more handsome than many and my good looks have lasted, to the wonder of many considering my extremely ill-used state, into old age. My hair, my eyebrows, moustache and beard were black or dark chestnut. […] I am now sixty-seven, and yet half of my moustache and beard are grey, while on my head perhaps twenty-five hairs are not white […] my eyes were dark and bright, no less than those of a hawk, such as would very much suit a girl, and very keen-sighted and sharp at distance, and I could see any tiny thing, distinguishing clearly. […] My nose was not of the excessively large variety, but a biggish, hooked, aquilinus nasus; an incident caused by childhood naughtiness flattened the end of it slightly but without any disfigurement. My sense of smell was quite exceptionally well, which often disturbed my sleep. […] My taste was good and strong, indeed perhaps acute. My arms were very long for my build, and other men’s were seldom longer than mine. My fingers and nails too were fine and long, but my toes and toenails were rough, ugly and bent, perhaps because of the narrow boots that were too small. […] My waist was slender, like the stomach of a pike, and my hands and feet dry 53 Ibid., 6. 54 Tóth, ‘A Man for All Seasons’, 278.

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as a deer’s, only skin and bone, so to speak. My body was all great bulging veins and sinews, but my face, neck, throat, thighs and temples were fleshy and full, in such a way as could neither have been called corpulence and fatness, nor yet leanness or desiccation, but I took it as lightness granted as a blessing from God; accordingly I was nimble on my feet (and I make no boast of it) but light and firm and moderate in girth, and a fair horseman. My strength too for my stature was quite great, though none would think it at first sight, especially in my arms. I could write of tests, but I do not wish to boast of vanities and waste paper. Perhaps even this is too much.55

Again the Puritan casus conscientiae and the scrupulous sinceritas eventuated in the total image of the self, in this particular case, of the body. We should treasure this detailed description of Bethlen’s physical appearance since those larger and smaller portraits depicting the chancellor have been lost for centuries. The narratological significance of the passage consists in the fact that it functions as the display of several foci to be elaborated and further developed during the course of the narrative account. Moreover, this detailed image of the body and its parts transforms into a confession enumerating the various sins associated with the body, its habits or physiological functions. Thus, further chapters or sections of the autobiography reveal the sinful predisposition in eating, drinking, playing cards, using verbal and physical violence and unavoidably in sexual behaviour. Apparently by this procedure Bethlen added a further dimension to his homiletically and theologically conceived confession, endorsing his self-image and condition of sinner comprising his soul, mind and body. He seems to unmask the corporeal reality of his private life deliberately. There is no sign of any alleviating tendency, just a sheer enumeration and description of the most embarrassing experiences of sexual nature. For instance, as a teenager he was confronted with the addiction to onanism, which he tried to cure by reading the Bible.56 Unfortunately, in no way did he elaborate on the efficiency of this particular treatment… However, further eloquent examples are the episodes he narrates concerning his sexual life before his marriage. Despite several attempts and temptations, he managed to preserve his virginity and, apart from his two wives, he never had any sexual intercourse with other women. There is a whole subchapter, suggestively entitled ‘Concerning the sins of my youth’, dedicated to this issue describing in vivid details the carnal temptations he had been subject to.57 Yet it is worth pointing out that, beyond the application of Puritan homiletics in order to provide a comprehensive confession, there is a new element that should be discerned in this account. I do sense here a certain pride, a particular manly confidence and dignity as the result of the God-given good looks, bodily 55 Bethlen, Autobiography, 115–16. 56 Ibid., 127. 57 Ibid., 223–6.

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strength and overall good state of health despite the unbearable state of mind and existence in imprisonment. I would argue that there are at least two distinct perspectives of the self which sustain this observation by adding new dimensions to the Puritan-like identity performance. The pious chancellor, though truly committed to the Puritan practice of piety, revealed his manhood in a very original way. Consequently, it is of paramount importance that in Bethlen’s confession manhood was equated with virility and sexual potency. His modest appreciation in this particular matter surely deserves proper attention: It is not fitting, nor yet necessary, that I should write of my bedroom, and the proof is seventeen children, five of which were by my first wife in my youth in the course of seventeen and a half years, and twelve by the second in sixteen years; if my first wife had been as healthy and fecund as the second, and if I had not been parted from the first for the year of my imprisonment in Fogaras and from the second for the four and a half years of my present imprisonment, perhaps we would have increased to the number of a sheaf of corn. […] Venus in me was not foolish, incontinent and frequent, but moderate, passionate, fertile and ordinary, and, as a result of that God-given moderation and strength, has even today in my old age not much abated.58

Though Bethlen, again, seems to progress in his narrative along the Puritan line, as he provides further intimate details of his sexuality, one cannot ignore the moderate but unquestionable self-esteem when sharing with his readership the vigorous sexual activity and functionality of his body, despite his age and unbearable condition. Furthermore, I believe that in spite of Bethlen’s persistence regarding his attitude of accepting his afflictions there is a nuance of sadness, as if pointing to the regret of wasting his life, manhood and felicity. Hence, sexuality, posited as a component of a corporeal reality, activates a new dimension of Bethlen’s identity performance, unnoticed so far by former interpreters; thus manhood and a moderate pride appear as a kind of counterbalance to the miserable condition of the individual as a mortal and a sinner. The corporeality of identity performance is further accentuated by the second perspective connected to the detailed and intimate depiction of his body. While the emphasis upon sexual potency denoted manhood and some kind of moderate pride, the corporeal particularities described in exhaustive details seem to suggest that Bethlen might have opted for a certain prototype when textually representing his body. It is worth revisiting the passage in question: My arms were very long for my build, and other men’s were seldom longer than mine. […] My waist was slender, like the stomach of a pike, and my hands and feet dry as a deer’s, only skin and bone, so to speak. My body was all great bulging veins and sinews, but my face, neck, throat, thighs and temples were fleshy and full, in such a way as could neither have been called corpulence and fatness, nor yet leanness or desiccation, but I 58 Ibid., 117.

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took it as lightness granted as a blessing from God; accordingly I was nimble on my feet (and I make no boast of it) but light and firm and moderate in girth, and a fair horseman. My strength too for my stature was quite great, though none would think it at first sight, especially in my arms.59

The shape of the body and its functions as attributes or virtues mentioned here display an interesting resemblance to the description of the ideal soldier publicised by early modern secondary literature on warfare. Vegetius’s book, De epitoma rei militaris,60 a book that Bethlen had certainly came across while studying in Leiden or at the court of the great warrior Miklós Zríny,61 describes the ideal soldier somewhat similarly.62 The English translation of this particular passage asserts: Those employed to superintend new levies should be particularly careful in examining the features of their faces, their eyes, and the make of their limbs, to enable them to form a true judgment and choose such as are most likely to prove good soldiers. For experience assures us that there are in men, as well as in horses and dogs, certain signs by which their virtues may be discovered. The young soldier, therefore, ought to have a lively eye, should carry his head erect, his chest should be broad, his shoulders muscular and brawny, his fingers long, his arms strong, his waist small, his shape easy, his legs and feet rather nervous than fleshy. When all these marks are found in a recruit, a little height may be dispensed with, since it is of much more importance that a soldier should be strong than tall.63

59 Ibid., 116. 60 Flavius Vegetius, De epitoma rei militaris (Leipzig, 1869). 61 Miklós Zrínyi (1620–64), the famous Hungarian military commander and poet, not only successively fought against the Ottomans but was also a man of excellent education, versatile in the art of warfare. Vegetius’s book, a 1592 edition printed in Leiden, was in his library; Zrínyi had not only read it, but wrote a treatise containing references to Vegetius, Török áfium elleni orvosság (Budapest: Neumann Kht., 2003). For instance, Zrínyi set forth the prototype of the ideal soldier closely following the aforementioned passage by Vegetius (Zrínyi, Török áfium elleni orvosság, 27). Taking into account the extraordinary popularity of Vegetius starting from the Middle Ages to early modern times – see Cristopher Allmand, The De Re Militari of Vegetius. The Reception, Transmission and Legacy of a Roman Text in the Middle Ages (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2011) –, it is no wonder that Bethlen, as an enthusiastic young man, admirer and trusted man of Miklós Zrínyi, found his own way to this text. Zrínyi might have played a guiding role in Bethlen’s recognising this text, in one way or another. 62 ‘Sit ergo adulescens Martio operi deputandus uigilantibus oculis, erecta ceruice, lato pectore, umeris musculosis, ualentibus brachiis, digitis longioribus, uentre modicus, exiliior cruribus, suris et pedibus non superflua carne distentis sed neruorum duritia collectis. Cum haec in tirone signa deprenhenderis, proceritatem non magno opere desideres. Utilius est enim fortes milites esse quam grandes’ (Vegetius, De epitoma rei militaris, 10). 63 Flavius Vegetius, Military Institutions of Vegetius, in Five Books. Translated from the Latin, with a Preface and Notes, by Lieutenant John Clarke (London, 1767), 12–13.

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While not a soldier, but still a man who had grown up in a genuine early modern reality animated by war experiences, Bethlen found the ultimate expression for his manhood and gender identity in the prototype of the ideal soldier. The textual representation of his body is a rhetorical invention meant to fictionalise the body. If early modern self-fashioning in the classic sense (as Greenblatt suggested) revealed early modern individuals’ attempt to find and assimilate a role and perform it as their own in order to create a self usually centred on the fascinating complexity of the mind and soul, Bethlen’s identity performance appears to alter the standard procedure as he also found the fictionalisation of his body equally important. Although we cannot fully question the unusual length of Bethlen’s arms, I am still convinced that identity performance in his case was equally focussed on the body and the soul, since the scrupulous sincerity of Puritan intent paved the way for a total self-fictionalisation. The godly Puritan confessed his sins, but displayed, at least textually, his manhood, as well.

Conclusion This essay was an attempt to reflect critically upon Greenblatt’s concept of selffashioning. I have pointed out that, despite its interdisciplinary leaning, there are some methodological and hermeneutical flaws inherent in any application of it. However, my main intention was to exhibit a case study, an attempt to examine closely, from historical-anthropological perspectives, the identity performance of an early modern individual. The textual representation, scrutinised in detail, made it possible to adumbrate a different pattern for the study of self-representations, one that does not ignore the representational value and functions of the human body as described in ego-documents. Moreover, reiterating criticisms of the Geertzian paradigm, my approach intended to provide further arguments suggesting that self-fashioning tends to be an obsolete concept, unless the applications to early modern cases recontextualise it in up-to-date theories and methods of historical anthropology.

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Rocheblave-Spenlé, Anne-Marie, La notion de rôle en psychologie sociale (Paris: Presses universitaires de France, 21969). Scribner, Robert, ‘Historical Anthropology of Early Modern Europe’, in Hsia, R. Po-chia/ Scribner, Robert (ed.), Problems in the Historical Anthropology of Early Modern Europe (Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz Verlag, 1997) 10–34. Sewell, William H., ‘Geertz, Cultural Systems, and History: from Synchrony to Transformation’, Representations 3 (1997) 35–55. Shankman, Paul, ‘The Thick and the Thin: On the Interpretive Theoretical Program of Clifford Geertz’, Current Anthropology 25/3 (1984) 261–80. Szo˝nyi, István Nagy, Mártírok Coronája (Debrecen, 1675). Todd, Margo, ‘Puritan Self-Fashioning: The Diary of Samuel Ward’, Journal of British Studies 3 (1992) 236–64. Tóth, Zsombor, ‘A Man for All Seasons: Exile, Suffering, and Martyrdom in the Autobiography of Miklós Bethlen’, Hungarian Studies 26 (2012) 273–82. Tóth, Zsombor, ‘Montaigne és Bethlen (?): “Meztelen” (“tout nud”) moralista “magyar köntösben”’, ItK 5–6 (2001) 600–17. Tóth, Zsombor, ‘Liminalitás és emlékirat-irodalom. Bethlen Miklós esete’, in Nyerges, Judit/Császtvay, Tünde (ed.), Szolgálatomat ajánlom a 60 éves Jankovics Józsefnek (Budapest: Balassi Kiadó, 2009) 448–57. Tóth, Zsombor, A koronatanú: Bethlen Miklós (Debrecen: Kossuth Lajos University Press, 2007). Tóth, Zsombor, ‘Calvinian Anthropology and the Early Modern Hungarian Devotion: The Case of István Nagy Szo˝nyi, the First Hungarian Martyrologist’, in Eusterschulte, Anne/ Wälzholz, Hannah (ed.), Anthropological Reformations – Anthropology in the Era of Reformation (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2015) 415–28. Vegetius, Flavius, De epitoma rei militaris (Leipzig, 1869). Vegetius, Flavius, Military Institutions of Vegetius, in Five Books. Translated from the Latin, with a Preface and Notes, by Lieutenant John Clarke (London, 1767). Veltri, Giuseppe/Diemling, Maria (ed.), The Jewish Body. Corporeality, Society, and Identity in the Renaissance and Early Modern Period (Leiden/Boston: Brill, 2009). Zrínyi, Miklós, Török áfium elleni orvosság (Budapest: Neumann Kht., 2003).

Illustrations

Fig. 1: Bernardo Daddi, Madonna between Saints Catherine and Zenobius, tempera on wood, ca. 1334; Firenze, Museo dell’Opera di Santa Maria del Fiore. © Peter Horree/Alamy/IPA

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Fig. 2: Rohan Master, Lamentation of the Virgin, in Grandes Heures de Rohan (Paris, ca. 1420), illuminated manuscript, Latin 9471; Paris, Bibliothèque Nationale de France. © image BnF/RMNRéunion des Musées Nationaux/distr. Alinari

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Fig. 3: Masaccio, The Holy Trinity, with the Virgin and Saint John and donors, fresco, ca. 1427–8; Firenze, Santa Maria Novella. © Granger Historical Picture Archive/Alamy/IPA

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Fig. 4: Sebald Beham, The Good Shepherd, woodcut, ca. 1527; Washington, National Gallery of Art

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Fig. 5: Monogrammist MS (attributed to), The Parable of the Good Shepherd, woodcut, in Hans Sachs, Evangelium: Der gut hirt unnd böß hyrt (early 16th century). © Mondadori portfolio/AKG images

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Fig. 6: Monogrammist MS (attributed to), Luther and Hus as the Good Shepherds, woodcut, ca. 1530/40. Photo: Volker-H. Schneider. © 2018. Foto Scala, Firenze/bpk, Bildagentur fuer Kunst, Kultur und Geschichte, Berlin

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Fig. 7: Workshop of Lucas Cranach the Elder, woodcut, title page of Urbanus Rhegius, Wie man die falschen Propheten erkennen ja greiffen mag (Wittenberg, 1539). © Universität Basel

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Fig. 8: Georg Pencz, woodcut, in Hans Sachs, Sibnerley Anstöß der welt so dem menschen der Christum suchet begegnen (Nürnberg, 1529). © The Trustees of the British Museum

Illustrations

Fig. 9: Title page of Hans Sachs, Die Wittenbergisch nachtigall (Bamberg, 1523)

393

394

Illustrations

Fig. 10: Workshop of Lucas Cranach the Elder (attributed to), woodcut, title page of Philip Melanchthon, Unterricht der Visitatorn an die Pfarhern ym Kurfurstenthum zu Sachssen (Wittenberg, 1538). © Heidelberg University Library

Illustrations

395

Fig. 11: German clay mould of the Mystic Winepress, ca. 1425; London, Victoria and Albert Museum. © Victoria and Albert Museum, London

396

Illustrations

Fig. 12: Jacques de Gheyn II and Zacharias Dolendo, Christ in the Winepress, engraving after Karel van Mander, 1596–8, title page of Karel van Mander’s Passion series. Imaging Department. © President and Fellows of Harvard College

Illustrations

397

Fig. 13: Christian Richter and Peter Troschel, engraving, title page of Martin Luther, Kurfürstenbibel (Nürnberg: Endter, 1641). © Lippische Landesbibliothek

398

Illustrations

Fig. 14: Stained-glass window of the Mystic Winepress; Paris, Église Saint-Étienne-du-Mont, 16th–17th century. Photo: Sílvia Canalda i Llobet

Illustrations

399

Fig. 15: Hieronymus Wierix, Torcular calcavi solus, et de gentibus non est vir mecum, engraving, ca. 1585; Barcelona, private collection. © age fotostock/Alamy/IPA

400

Illustrations

Fig. 16: The Mystic Winepress, late 17th century; Palma de Mallorca, Convent de la Puríssima Concepció de Monges Caputxines. Photo: Sílvia Canalda i Llobet

Illustrations

401

Fig. 17: Francisco Ribalta (attributed to), The Mystic Winepress, oil on canvas, early 17th century; private collection. Photo: Sílvia Canalda i Llobet

402

Illustrations

Fig. 18: Anton Möller the Elder, Last Judgement, oil on panel, ca. 1602–3 (missing). © Endless Travel/IPA

Illustrations

403

Fig. 19: Workshop of Herman Han, Pride Leads to Jealousy, tempera on panel, ca. 1600–10; Gdan´sk, Muzeum Narodowe w Gdan´sku. Courtesy of Muzeum Narodowe w Gdan´sku

Fig. 20: Anton Möller the Elder, Joash Repairs the Temple, oil on panel, 1602; Gdan´sk, Muzeum Narodowe w Gdan´sku. Courtesy of Muzeum Narodowe w Gdan´sku

404

Illustrations

Fig. 21: Aegidius Dickmann, etching, title page of Praecipuorum locorum et aedificiorum quae in urbe Dantiscana visuntur, adumbratio (Amsterdam, 1617). © PAN Biblioteka Gdan´ska, Gdan´sk

Fig. 22: Bartholomäus Milwitz (attributed to), View of Gdan´sk, oil on panel, ca. 1625–40; Gdan´sk, Muzeum Narodowe w Gdan´sku. Courtesy of Muzeum Narodowe w Gdan´sku

Illustrations

405

Fig. 23: Workshop of Peeter Danckers de Rij, Portrait of a Woman, oil on canvas, ca. 1640; Gdan´sk, Muzeum Narodowe w Gdan´sku. Courtesy of Muzeum Narodowe w Gdan´sku

406

Illustrations

Fig. 24: Anton Möller the Elder, Dance in a Patrician’s House, oil on panel, ca. 1596–1600 (missing). Courtesy of Muzeum Narodowe w Gdan´sku

Illustrations

407

Fig. 25: Anton Möller the Elder, Giovanni Bernardino Bonifacio, Marquis d’Oria, oil on panel, 1597; Gdan´sk, PAN Biblioteka Gdan´ska. © PAN Biblioteka Gdan´ska, Gdan´sk

408

Illustrations

Fig. 26: Workshop of Lucas Cranach the Elder, Portrait of Martin Luther in death shirt, oil on panel, 1546; Leipzig, Kustodie – Kunstsammlung der Universität Leipzig. Photo: Marion Wenzel. © Universität Leipzig, Kustodie

Illustrations

409

Fig. 27: Bartholomeus Strobel, Portrait of Martin Opitz, oil on canvas, 1637; Gdan´sk, PAN Biblioteka Gdan´ska. © PAN Biblioteka Gdan´ska, Gdan´sk

410

Illustrations

Fig. 28: Adolf Boy, Portrait of Salomon Giese, ca. 1650; Gdan´sk, Muzuem Historyczne Miasta Gdan´ska. Courtesy of Muzeum Narodowe w Gdan´sku

Illustrations

411

Fig. 29: Laurence Neter, Portrait of a man, 1651; Kraków, Zamek Królewski na Wawelu, Pan´stwowe Zbiory Sztuki. © Wawel Royal Castle, Kraków

412

Illustrations

Fig. 30: Regulations by Bishop Jean Chevrot of Tournai, Rijsel, 16 May 1459, parchment; Bruges, Archives Public Welfare Centre Bruges, Fund St John’s Hospital, charter no. 1222. Photo: City of Bruges, division photography/Bruges, Archives PublicWelfare Centre

Fig. 31: Portal of the central ward, late 13th century, St John’s Hospital, Bruges. Photo: City of Bruges, division photography

Illustrations

413

Fig. 32: A separate, new convent, built for the nuns, 1539–44, Bruges. Photo: Arnout Goegebuer

414

Illustrations

Fig. 33: Jacob van Oost the Elder, Madonna and Child Surrounded by Saints, oil on canvas, 1637; Bruges, St John’s Hospital, Art collection Public Welfare Centre. Photo: Lukas – Art in Flanders Vzw

Illustrations

415

Fig. 34: Hans Memling, St John Altarpiece, oil on panel, ca. 1474–9; Bruges, St John’s Hospital, Art collection Public Welfare Centre. Photo: Lukas – Art in Flanders, photo Dominique Provost

Fig. 35: Jacob van Oost the Elder and Jacob van Oost the Younger (attributed to), Lamentation with Two Portraits of Hospital Sisters, oil on canvas, 1665; Bruges, St John’s Hospital, Art collection Public Welfare Centre. Photo: Lukas – Art in Flanders Vzw

416

Illustrations

Fig. 36: Jacob van Oost the Elder (attributed to), Madonna with Two Saints and Two Hospital Sisters, 1664; Bruges, St John’s Hospital, Art collection Public Welfare Centre. Photo: Sightways/ photography Jens Compernolle/Bruges, Archives Public Welfare Centre

Fig. 37: Jacques de Cantere Jr., Ostensory of Saint Apollonia’s relics, silver, 1620; Bruges, St John’s Hospital, Art collection Public Welfare Centre. Photo: Sightways/photography Jens Compernolle

Illustrations

417

Fig. 38: Jacob van Oost the Elder (attributed to), Ascension of St Apollonia, oil on canvas, 1660; Bruges, St John’s Hospital, Art collection Public Welfare Centre. Photo: Lukas – Art in Flanders Vzw

418

Illustrations

Fig. 39: Quentin Metsys, Erasmus of Rotterdam, oil on panel, transferred to canvas, 1517; Roma, Gallerie nazionali d’arte antica. © Granger Historical Picture Archive/Alamy/IPA

Illustrations

419

Fig. 40: Quentin Metsys, The Money Changer and His Wife, oil on panel, 1514; Paris, Musée du Louvre. © Granger Historical Picture Archive/Alamy/IPA

420

Illustrations

Fig. 41: Quentin Metsys, The Ugly Duchess, oil on panel, ca. 1513; London, National Gallery. © Artepics/Alamy/IPA

Illustrations

421

Fig. 42: Quentin Metsys, Ill–Matched Pair, oil on panel, ca. 1520–5; Washington, National Gallery of Art. Courtesy of National Gallery of Art, Washington

422

Illustrations

Fig. 43: Leonardo da Vinci, Five Grotesque Heads, pen and ink on paper, ca. 1494; Windsor, Royal Collection Trust, Royal Library. © ART Collection/Alamy/IPA

Illustrations

423

Fig. 44: Quentin Metsys, detail of the Martyrdom of St John the Evangelist, right wing of St John Altarpiece, oil on panel, 1507–8; Antwerp, Koninklijk Museum voor Schone Kunsten. © www.lukasweb.be – Art in Flanders Wzw, photo Hugo Maertens

424

Illustrations

Fig. 45: Quentin Metsys (attributed to), Christ in front of Pilate, fresco, 16th century; Milano, Abbazia di Chiaravalle, oratorio di San Bernardo. © Paola Villa Restauri

Illustrations

425

Fig. 46: Quentin Metsys, Ecce Homo, oil on panel, ca. 1520; Venezia, Palazzo Ducale. © Artepics/ Alamy/IPA

426

Illustrations

Fig. 47: Workshop of Lucas Cranach the Elder, frontside of the Reformation Altarpiece, oil on panel, 1547; Wittenberg, Stadtkirche St. Marien. © jmp-bildagentur, J.M. Pietsch, Spröda, mit freundlicher Genehmigung der Stadtkirchengemeinde Wittenberg

Illustrations

427

Fig. 48: Workshop of Lucas Cranach the Elder, backside of the Reformation Altarpiece, oil on panel, 1547; Wittenberg, Stadtkirche St. Marien. © jmp-bildagentur, J.M. Pietsch, Spröda, mit freundlicher Genehmigung der Stadtkirchengemeinde Wittenberg

428

Illustrations

Fig. 49: Michael Rößler, Portrait of Hans Lufft, copper engraving, 1726; Leipzig, Deutsche Nationalbibliothek. © Deutsche Nationalbibliothek, Leipzig

Illustrations

429

Fig. 50: Workshop of Lucas Cranach the Elder (attributed to), Portrait of Georg Rhau, woodcut and letterpress, ca. 1545–7; London, British Museum. © The Trustees of the British Museum

430

Illustrations

Fig. 51: Lucas Cranach the Younger, Epitaph for Bartholomäus Vogel, 1569; Wittenberg, Stadtkirche St. Marien. © jmp-bildagentur, J.M. Pietsch, Spröda, mit freundlicher Genehmigung der Stadtkirchengemeinde Wittenberg

Illustrations

431

Fig. 52: Balthasar Jenichen, Portrait of Kaspar von Schwenckfeld, etching, 1565; Nürnberg, Germanischen Nationalmuseum. © Germanisches Nationalmuseum, Nürnberg

432

Illustrations

Fig. 53: Lucas Cranach the Younger, Elector Johann Friederich of Saxony and the Reformers, painting on wood, ca. 1538; Toledo, Toledo Museum of Art. © Mondadori portfolio/AKG images

Illustrations

Fig. 54: Lutherus triumphans, woodcut, ca. 1568; Wittenberg, Lutherhaus

433

434

Illustrations

Fig. 55: Lucas Cranach the Younger, Altarpiece, 1565; Kemberg, Kirche St. Marien. © Mondadori portfolio/AKG images

Illustrations

435

Fig. 56: Lucas Cranach the Younger, Epitaph of Michael Meyenburg: The Raising of Lazarus, painting on wood, 1558 (missing); Nordhausen, St. Blasiikirche

436

Illustrations

Fig. 57: Lucas Cranach the Younger, Traums Melanchtons, woodcut, 1547. © SLUB Dresden/ LI23970S391

Illustrations

437

Fig. 58: Lucas Cranach the Younger, epitaph for Paul Eber, The Vineyard of the Lord, oil on panel, 1569; Wittenberg, Stadtkirche. © jmp-bildagentur, J.M. Pietsch, Spröda, mit freundlicher Genehmigung der Stadtkirchengemeinde Wittenberg

438

Illustrations

Fig. 59: Tomb monument for Hans I von Schaffgotsch, second half of the 16th century; Reußendorf, Filialkirche St. Marien. Photo: Justyna Chodasewicz

Illustrations

439

Fig. 60: Tomb monument for Hans II von Schaffgotsch, second half of the 16th century; Reußendorf, Filialkirche St. Marien. Photo: Justyna Chodasewicz

440

Illustrations

Fig. 61: Wall tomb for Anton von Schaffgotsch, second half of the 16th century; Reußendorf, Filialkirche St. Marien. Photo: Justyna Chodasewicz

Illustrations

Fig. 62: Tomb for Karl I von Münsterberg and Anna von Sagan; Frankenstein, Pfarrkirche

441

442

Illustrations

Fig. 63: Expulsion of Adam and Eve from the garden of Eden, Tomb monument for Hans I von Schaffgotsch, second half of the 16th century; Reußendorf, Filialkirche St. Marien. Photo: Justyna Chodasewicz

Fig. 64: Christ on the Cross. Tomb monument for Hans II von Schaffgotsch, second half of the 16th century; Reußendorf, Filialkirche St. Marien. Photo: Justyna Chodasewicz

Illustrations

443

Fig. 65: Wall tomb for Ulrich von Schaffgotsch, ca. 1561; Breslau, Elisabethkirche. Photo: Dawid Galus

444

Illustrations

Fig. 66: Wall tomb for Hans von Schaffgotsch and his family, 1585–89; Greiffenberg, Pfarrkirche. Photo: Justyna Chodasewicz

Illustrations

Fig. 67: Coat of arms and inscription, 1732; Kork, Pfarrkirche. Photo: Kathrin Ellwardt

445

446

Illustrations

Fig. 68: Workshop of Lucas Cranach the Younger, Altarpiece depicting Duke August I of Saxony and his family, oil on panel, 1571; Augustusburg, Schlosskapelle. Photo: Kathrin Ellwardt

Illustrations

447

Fig. 69: Governor’s box, with the coats of arms of Count Johann Ernst of Nassau-Weilburg and his spouse Maria Polyxena von Leiningen-Westerburg, surrounded by military trophies, 1712/13; Weilburg, Schlosskirche. Photo: Kathrin Ellwardt

Fig. 70: Stechinelli-Kapelle, Wieckenberg, 1692. Photo: Kathrin Ellwardt

448

Illustrations

Fig. 71: Church interior, 17th/18th century; Lüdingworth, St.-Jacobi-Kirche. Photo: Kathrin Ellwardt

Illustrations

449

Fig. 72: Outer wall of the chancel with coats of arms, 1608; Lüdingworth, St.-Jacobi-Kirche. Photo: Kathrin Ellwardt

450

Illustrations

Fig. 73: Detail of the church ceiling, 1600/20; Lüdingworth, St.-Jacobi-Kirche. Photo: Kathrin Ellwardt

Illustrations

Fig. 74: Pulpit, early 17th century; Lüdingworth, St.-Jacobi-Kirche. Photo: Kathrin Ellwardt

451

452

Illustrations

Fig. 75: Detail of the pulpit, early 17th century; Lüdingworth, St.-Jacobi-Kirche. Photo: Kathrin Ellwardt

Illustrations

453

Fig. 76: Altar rail with an epitaph for the Kopf family, 1778; Lüdingworth, St.-Jacobi-Kirche. Photo: Kathrin Ellwardt

454

Illustrations

Fig. 77: Communion railing by the main altar; Lüdingworth, St.-Jacobi-Kirche. Photo: Kathrin Ellwardt

Fig. 78: Church Gallery, 1774; Lüdingworth, St.-Jacobi-Kirche. Photo: Kathrin Ellwardt

Illustrations

455

Fig. 79: One of the three epitaphs on the southern wall of the nave; Lüdingworth, St.-JacobiKirche. Photo: Kathrin Ellwardt

456

Illustrations

Fig. 80: The Trial of Christ, oil on canvas; Wschowa, Klasztor Zakonu Braci Mniejszych – Franciszkanie. Photo: Dawid Ga˛siorek

Fig. 81: Detail of The Trial of Christ; Wschowa, Klasztor Zakonu Braci Mniejszych – Franciszkanie. Photo: Dawid Ga˛siorek

Illustrations

457

Fig. 82: Veduta of the city of Wschowa under God’s protection, fresco, after 1742; Wschowa, Kos´ciół S´wie˛tego Stanisława Biskupa i Me˛czennika. Photo: Marta Małkus

Fig. 83: Francesco Bertelli, Iudicium Sanguinarium contra Iesum Christi Salvatorem Mundi, engraving, early 17th century; Trento, Biblioteca Comunale. Courtesy of Biblioteca Comunale, Trento

458

Illustrations

Fig. 84: Jan van Londerseel, Der Papst im Lateran, copperplate engraving; Wien, Albertina. © Albertina Wien

Fig. 85: Publisher seal, detail of Jan van Londerseel, Der Papst im Lateran; Wien, Albertina. © Albertina Wien

Fig. 86: Aerts’s grave plate and inscription, detail of Jan van Londerseel, Der Papst im Lateran; Wien, Albertina. © Albertina Wien

Illustrations

459

Fig. 87: Workshop of Lucas Cranach the Elder, Adoratur Papa Deus Terrenus, woodcut, in Martin Luther, Abbildung des Papsttums (Wittenberg, 1545). © Akademische Druck- u. Verlagsanstalt Dr. Paul Struzl Gmbh St. Peter, Graz

460

Illustrations

Fig. 88: Woodcut after Heinrich Vogtherr, Antichrist, in Rudolf Gwalther, Der Endtchrist (Zürich, 1546). © Zentralbibliothek, Zurich

Illustrations

Fig. 89: Theodore Beza, Emblema XXVIIII, woodcut, in Icones (Genève, 1580). Courtesy of Universität Mannheim

461

462

Illustrations

Fig. 90: In thiaram pontificiam tyranidis romanae, pen and ink drawing, 16th century; Rotterdam, Atlas van Stolk. Courtesy of Atlas Van Stolk, Rotterdam

Illustrations

Fig. 91: Jan van Londerseel, Der Papst im Lateran, mirrored

463

464

Illustrations

Fig. 92: Hendrick Aerts, Inneres einer gotischen Kirche, oil on panel; Braunschweig, Herzog Anton Ulrich-Museum. © Herzog Anton Ulrich-Museum. Kunstmuseum des Landes Niedersachsen, Braunschweig

Fig. 93: Paul Vredeman de Vries, Kircheninterieur, oil on panel; Rohrau, Schloß Rohrau, Graf Harrach’sche Familiensammlung. © Graf Harrach’sche Familiensammlung, Schloß Rohrau, Rohrau

Fig. 94: Hans Vredeman de Vries, Inneres einer gotischen Kirche, oil on panel, 1594. Courtesy of Galerie Frye & Sohn, Münster

Illustrations

465

Fig. 95: Detail of Johann Michael Bretschneider, Gemäldekabinett, oil on canvas, after 1700; Mönchengladbach, Städtisches Museum Schloß Rheydt. Photo: Rainer Kobe

Fig. 96: Initial ‘C’ (Constantine), in John Foxe, Actes and Monuments (London: John Day, 1563). © Henry Huntington Library, San Marino, CA

466

Illustrations

Fig. 97: Hans Eworth, Queen Elizabeth and the Three Goddesses or The Judgement of Paris, oil on panel, 1569; Windsor, Royal Collection Trust. © ART Collection/Alamy/IPA

Illustrations

467

Fig. 98: Nicholas Hilliard, Queen Elizabeth I: Pelican Portrait, oil on canvas, ca. 1572–6; Liverpool, Walker Art Gallery. © Ian Dagnall Computing/Alamy/IPA

468

Illustrations

Fig. 99: Federigo Zuccaro (attributed to), Queen Elizabeth I: Darnley Portrait, oil on panel, ca. 1575; London, National Portrait Gallery. © National Portrait Gallery, London

Illustrations

469

Fig. 100: Title page of John Case, Sphaera Civitatis (Oxford: Joseph Barnes, 1588). © Henry Huntington Library, San Marino, CA

470

Illustrations

Fig. 101: Francis Delaram, engraving after Nicholas Hilliard, in William Camden, Historie of the most renowned and victorious princesse Elizabeth, late Queen of England (London: Benjamin Fisher, 1630). © Henry Huntington Library, San Marino, CA

Illustrations

471

Fig. 102: George Gower (attributed to), Queen Elizabeth I: Armada Portrait, oil on panel, 1588; Woburn, Woburn Abbey and Gardens. © Archivart/Alamy/IPA

472

Illustrations

Fig. 103: Marcus Gheeraerts the Younger, Queen Elizabeth I: Ditchley Portrait, oil on canvas, ca. 1592; London, National Portrait Gallery. © National Portrait Gallery, London

Illustrations

473

Fig. 104: The Reformation, English memorial sheet dedicated to the Reformation, engraving and etching, 1794; Bretten, Melanchthonhaus, Druckgrafische Sammlung. © Europäische Melanchton-Akademie

474

Illustrations

Fig. 105: Denkmal am dritten Jubelfeste der Reformation, German memorial sheet dedicated to the third centennial celebration of the Reformation, engraving and etching, 1817; Bretten, Melanchthonhaus, Druckgrafische Sammlung. © Europäische Melanchton-Akademie

Illustrations

475

Fig. 106: Andrei Rublev, Holy Trinity, icon, ca. 1420; Moscow, Tretyakov Gallery. © PAINTING/ Alamy/IPA

476

Illustrations

Fig. 107: Lucas Cranach the Elder, Martin Luther and Jan Hus Administering the Sacrament to Members of the House of Saxe, woodcut, 1550–80; London, British Museum. © Mondadori portfolio/AKG images

Illustrations

477

Fig. 108: Martin Luther preaching and receiving communion, 1561, panel from the altar of Torslunde Kirke, Denmark; Copenhagen, National Museum. © Art Collection 2/Alamy/IPA

478

Illustrations

Fig. 109: Andreas Herneisen, Luther Presenting His Doctrines (Confessio Augustana to Emperor Charles V), oil on canvas, ca. 1601; Nürnberg, Mögeldorf, St. Nikolaus- und St. Ulrichs-Kirche. © Heilbronn Stadtarchiv

Illustrations

479

Fig. 110: The celebration of the sacrament in sitting form, title page of Het rechte gebruyck van des Heeren H. avondtmael, engraving, 1680; Den Haag, Koninklijke Bibliotheek. © KB | National library: KW 1791 D 2

480

Illustrations

Fig. 111: Cathédrale Saint-Pierre, Genève, 12th century. © Paolo Romiti/Alamy/IPA

Index of persons

Aavitsland, Kristin B. 79 Adorno, Theodor W. 358 Adrian, saint 100 Aerts, Hendrick 17a f., 181–190, 464 Agricola, Ignaz 296 Agüera Ros, Jose C.V. 56 Aikemait, Bernard 18 Ailly, Pierre d’ 15 Albarello, Duilio 318 f., 322 Alberigo, Giuseppe 298 Alcoy i Pedrós, Rosa 39 Alegambe, Philippe 299 Alembert, Jean-Baptiste Le Rond d’ 218 Alexandre-Bidon, Danièle 40 f., 43, 45, 48 Alighieri, Dante 337, 340, 344, 348, 354 f., 357 Allegaert, Patrick 90 f. Allen, Helen M. 110 Allen, Percy S. 110 Allmand, Cristopher 380 Alphonso, Herbert 293 Alsted, Johann H. 372 Althaus, Paul 271 f. Alvar, Alfredo 43 Ambrosius 78, 273 Amerbach, Bonifacio 76–78 Ames, William 372, 375 f. Amman, Jost 45 Amos, N. Scott 215 Amsdorf, Nikolaus von 134 Andrae, Christian 305 Angenendt, Arnold 237 Anna von Sagan 144, 441 Anne, saint 103, 128, 376

Anthoniszoon, Cornelis 69, 81 Anthony the Abbot, saint 100 Anton von Schaffgotsch 146, 440 Apáczai Csere, János 372 Apollonia, saint 103, 416 Appold, Kenneth G. 287 Aristotle 79, 275, 278, 321 Arnold, Matthieu 244 Assmann, Jan 219 Auerbach, Erich 317, 335–360 August I, duke of Saxony 153, 446 Augustijn, Cornelis 252 Augustine of Hippo, saint 256, 258 Avogadri, Claudio 317 Ayre, John 206 Bacci, Michele 9, 13 Bächtold, Hans U. 235 Backhus, Irena 76 Bahti, Timothy 338 Bailey, Gauvin A. 294 Baillie-Grohman, William 115 Bainton, Roland H. 109 Baldung, Hans 21 Bale, John 195, 204 Balin´ski, Hieronim 167 Balthasar, Hans Urs von 318, 431 Bancu, Stefano 20 Baranowski, Andrzej 161 Barbara von Zeidlitz 145 Barbier, Muriel 69 Barck, Karl-Heinz 335–337, 339–341, 343, 355, 359 Baronio, Cesare 292

482 Barth, Karl 318 Barth, Peter 236 Basyn, Jean-Marc 90 f. Batowski, Zygmunt 80 Battles, Ford L. 240, 252 Baum, Johann W. 236 Baumgärtner, Adam F.G. 223 Baur, Ferdinand C. 303–307, 309–313 Bauspieß, Martin 306 Becker, Felix 191, 214 Becon, Thomas 206 Bedouelle, Guy 18 Beham, Sebald 32, 388 Bek-Koren´, Aleksandra 162 Bellavitis, Maddalena 119 Bellini, Federico 20 Bellini, Giovanni 120 Belti, Francesco 77 Benedict, Philip 18, 76 Benjamin, Walter 199, 337, 341, 347, 353– 360 Benoist, René 258 Berengarius of Tours 238 Bergmans, Anna 96 Bergoglio, Jorge M. see Francis, pope Bergognone [Ambrogio di Stefano da Fossano] 55 Bernard of Clairvaux, saint 242, 251 Bernhardi, Bartholomäus 134 Bernutz, Andreas 125 Bertelli, Francesco 165, 457 Bethlen, Miklós 372–381 Betten, Leonard 96 Bettes, John 199 Betz, Hans D. 306 Beutel, Albrecht 34 Beveridge, Henry 236 Beyer, Christian 125 Beza, Theodore 179, 181, 308, 461 Bianchi, Enzo 335 Biel, Gabriël 260 Bilson, Thomas 206 f. Bindman, David 218 Bischoff, Christine 41 Bizer, Ernst 248 Bleyerveld, Yvonne 175

Index of persons

Bloch, Ernst 343, 353, 360 Blocke, Isaak van den 65, 68, 173 Blom, Hans 82 Böcher, Otto 219 Bodemann, Ulrike 241 Boelaert, Johan R. 97 Boer, Erik A. de 335 Boersma, Hans 265 Boersma, Karla 24 Boespflug, François 9 f., 12, 14–16, 18, 52 Boettger, Johann G. 223 Bogucka, Maria 61–63 Böhm, Heinrich 68, 179 Bolko I. 144 Bolko II. 144 Bollacher, Martin 308 Bomski, Franziska 129 Bonadura, Krzysztof, the Elder 164 Bonasone, Giulio 74 Bonaventure, saint 41 Bonhoeffer, Dietrich 318 f. Bonifacio, Giovanni B. 73–80, 84, 407 Bora, Katharina von 19 Bosque, Andrée de 110 Bott, Gherard 33 f., 43 Bottacin, Francesca 109 Bouwsma, William J. 250 Bowyer, Robert 213 f., 220, 222 Boy, Adolf 83, 410 Boyarin, Daniel 339 Boydell, John 214 Boydell, Joshua 214 Bracciolini, Poggio 371 Brady, Philip V. 273 Brady, Thomas A. 303 Brandon, Robert 201 Brandt, Peter 224 Brant, Sebastian 64, 67 Braune, August G. 162 Bretschneider, Johann Michael 188, 190, 465 Bridget, saint 103 Briellmans, Isabelle 102 Brosamer, Hans 32, 44 Browe, Peter 241 Brunelleschi, Filippo 10

Index of persons

Brunnschweiler, Thomas 235 Bucer, Martin 213, 215, 217, 220, 223, 263 Buck, August 215, 220 Bugenhagen, Johannes 19, 126 f., 129, 132–134, 137, 140 Bullinger, Heinrich 178 f. Bulloch, Anthony W. 78 Bünz, Enno 123 Bureau, Nicolaas de 103 Burke, Joseph 218 Burke, Peter 371 Burkhardt, Johannes 28, 131 f., 136 f. Bürkner, Richard 304 Busch, Eberhard 236, 245 Buss, Klaus 81 Bussy, Nicolás de 56 Buyle, Marjan 90 f. Buzzi, Franco 18 Caccamo, Domenico 77 f. Cadinu, Marco 52 Caiaphas 165 Caitlin, George 370 Cała, Alina 169 Calveras, Jose 300 Calvin, Jean 24, 44, 62, 76, 179 f., 182 f., 205, 223, 225, 233 f., 236–241, 243–250, 252 f., 255–265, 307 f., 311 Camden, William 199, 470 Campbell, Lorne 111, 119 Campi, Emidio 76, 245, 303 Canalda i Llobet, Sílvia 39, 50 f., 398, 400 f. Cantere, Jacques de, Jr. 103, 416 Cantzler, Hans 125 Carafa, Carlo see Paul IV Caramanna, Claudia 119 Caravaggio [Merisi, Michelangelo] 100 Carbonnier-Burkard, Marianne 244 Carmona Carmona, Francisco M. 52 Carty, Carolyn M. 42 Casanova, Giacomo 351 Case, John 201 f., 469 Caspers, Charles M.A. 241 f., 253, 255, 259 f., 264 Cassirer, Ernst 341 Castellio, Sebastiano 76

483 Castelnuovo, Enrico 9, 15 Castiglione, Baldassarre 84 Catoni, Maria L. 360 Cavalieri, Federico 118 Cavalli-Björkman, Görel 109 Cervós, Fridericus 293 Charlemagne, Holy Roman emperor 200 Charles V, Holy Roman emperor 33, 76, 129, 200, 478 Chevrot, Jean 92, 412 Chiaveghino [Mainardi, Andrea] 55 Chodasewicz, Justyna 143f., 147, 438–440, 442, 444 Christensen, Carl C. 43 Christian, duke of Saxe-Eisenberg 153 Christin, Olivier 41, 50 Christoph von Schaffgotsch 147 Churchyard, Thomas 201 Chyträus, David 272 f., 276–278, 284 f., 287 Cicero 78, 274, 277 Cies´lak, Edmund 62 Cies´lak, Katarzyna 62, 74 Cies´lak, Tadeusz 62 Clemen, Otto K. 241 Cleven, Jean van 103 Clifford, James 365, 370 Clifton, James 43 Cochin, Charles N., the Younger 218 Cock, Hieronymus 64 Codina, Arturo 294 Cohen, Hermann 353 Cohen, Jeremy 166 Colerus, Christophorus 81 Collaert, Adriaen 165 Collaert I, Jan 63 Collinson, Patrick 198 f., 204, 208 f. Comenius, John A. 372 Constantine I, emperor 200, 310, 465 Coomans, Thomas 96 Cooper, Tracy E. 101 f. Cooter, Roger 372 Corbin, Henry 351 Corfiati, Claude 76 Cornelis, Augustijn 110, 252 Cornelisz, Jacob 47

484 Correggio [Allegri, Antonio] 119 Cottin, Jérôme 11, 15–17, 19 Cova, Gian D. 335 Cranach, Lucas, the Elder 18 f., 21 f., 34 f., 45, 75, 124–128, 132, 137, 178, 391, 394, 408, 426 f., 429, 459, 476 Cranach, Lucas, the Younger 18 f., 34, 75, 124–129, 132–134, 137, 139, 430, 432, 434–437, 446 Cranmer, Thomas 208, 308 Crapanzano, Vincent 370 Cromwell, Thomas 195 Cruciger, Caspar 132 f. Császtvay, Tünde 374 Cunitz, August E. 236 Cunnally, John 220 Curione, Celio S. 76 Curtius, Ernst R. 351 Cust, Lionel H. 214 Cyprianus 77 f. Daddi, Bernardo 13, 385 Dailly, Isabelle 102 Dall’Olio, Guido 109 Dalmases, Candido de 300 Damant, Benoit 69 Danckers de Rij, Peeter 68, 405 Dantiscus, Johannes 62 Danz, Christian 306 Davies, John 202 Dawson, John D. 338 f., 343, 354 Day, John 200 De Bruyne, Hilde 97 de Gheyn II, Jacques 46, 396 de Man, Paul 338 de Wette, Wilhelm M.L. 225 De˛bin´ski, Antoni 165 Dedner, Burghard 225 Defoer, Henri L.M. 42, 47 Dehaeck, Sigrid 90 Delaram, Francis 202, 470 Della Terza, Dante 336, 340 Democritus 64, 116 Deneweth, Heidi 97 Denzinger, Heinrich 242, 255, 271 d’Espence, Claude 50

Index of persons

Dias, Rosie 214 Dickmann, Aegidius 66, 404 Diderot, Denis 218 Diemling, Maria 372 Dilthey, Wilhelm 369 Ditchfield, Simon 294 Dohna, Karl H. von 81 Dolce, Lodovico 75 Dolendo, Zacharias 46, 396 Dominici, Tamara 109, 118 Dönhoff, Gerhard von 82 Doran, Susan 208 Döring, Christian 125 Douglas, Mary 371 Dräger, Ulf 224 Drake, Francis 203 Driutius, Remigius 95 Düding, Dieter 224 Duerloo, Luc 94 Duffy, Eamon 197, 208–211 Dunkle, Brian P. 322 Duns Scotus, John 319 Dürer, Albrecht 18, 22, 42, 113 Duyfkens, Jan 96 Dyrness, William 195, 198 f. Dzwonkowski, Tadeusz 162 Eber, Paul 134, 139, 437 Ederer, Martin F. 321 Edward VI, king of England 195 Egerton, Thomas 211 Egli, Emil 235 Eidam, Hardy 226 Eliade, Mircea 351 Elias, Norbert 371 Elizabeth I, queen of England 197, 199– 205, 207–211, 216 Elizabeth of Hungary, saint 102 Elliott, John H. 196 Ellwardt, Kathrin 151, 153, 445–455 Elwood, Christopher 265 Emser, Hieronymus 34 Endter, Wolfgang 47, 397 Erasmus von Rotterdam, Desiderius 15, 24, 67, 76, 78, 109–117, 119 f., 136, 213, 215–217, 223, 225, 236, 246

Index of persons

Ernst, duke of Saxony-Weimar 47 Esteban Lorente, Juan F. 53 Esther, Jean-Pierre 92 Eugenius IV, pope [Condulmaro, Gabriele] 255 Eusebius of Caesarea 31 Eusterschulte, Anne 128, 376 Evans, Chris 217 f. Evans, Gillian R. 246 Evans, Michael 41 Ewerszumrode, Frank 248 Eworth, Hans 199, 466 Eyck, Jan van 115 Faber, Basilius 272 f., 279 f., 284 Faber, Eva-Maria 319 f., 322, 330 Faber, Richard 340, 343 f., 353 Fabian, Bernhard 272 Faggioli, Massimo 299 Falk, Tilman 34 Falkenburg, Reindert 235 Farel, Guillaume 239, 247 Fattori, Maria T. 331 Faulhaber, Michael von 325, 331 Fehl, Philipp 113, 176 Felici, Lucia 21 Fernández Terricabras, Ignasi 43 Ferrario, Fulvio 318 Ferrer, Vincenzo 15 Filedt Kok, Jan Piet 47 Finaldi, Gabriele 42 Finsler, Georg 235 Firpo, Luigi 110 Fisher, John 210 f. Fiske, Tina 214 Flaubert, Gustave 346 Flitner, Andreas 308 Flügel, Wolfgang 224 f. Fogliadini, Emanuela 16, 18 Fontcuberta i Famadas, Cristina 39, 50 f. Foresta, Patrizio 291 f. Fornenbergh, Alexander van 118 Förster, Caspar, the Younger 68 Förster, Johann 133 f. Foxe, John 198, 200, 214 f., 221, 465 Francis, pope [Bergoglio, Jorge M.] 331 f.

485 Francken, Frans 165 Frank, Günter 216, 272, 303 Franssen, Paul 48 Frantis, Wayne E. 82 Franz II, duke of Saxe-Lauenburg 156 f. Frederick III, elector of Saxony 19 Freedberg, David 74, 80, 209 Fresselicque, John J. 221 f. Freudenberg, Matthias 236 Friedemann, Peter 224 Friedländer, Max J. 110 Friedrich, Jacek 74 Friedrich, Karin 61 Friedrich II. von Liegnitz und Brieg 144 Fries, Heinrich 305 Furtenagel, Lucas 75 Gaehtgens, Thomas W. 113 Gallas, Alberto 318 f. Galle, Philip 63, 177 Galle, Theodor 63 Ganni, Enrico 355 Gansfort, Johan 234 Gansfort, Wessel 233 f., 263 Garcaeus, Johannes, Jr. 272 f., 275 f., 278, 280–283 Gardiner, Robert 222 Gatouillat, Françoise 49 Gatti Perer, Maria L. 55 Geertz, Clifford 365, 368–372 Geil, Klaus 308 Gelderen, Martin van 216 Geldhof, Jozef 92, 95 Georg II. Von Münsterberg 145 Georg Rudolf, duke of Liegnitz 81 George, Stefan 19, 343 Gerhartz, Johannes G. 300 Gerkens, Hinrich 155 f. Gerlo, Aloïs 110 Gerung, Matthias 34 Gheeraerts, Marcus, the Younger 203, 472 Gibson, Walter S. 64 f., 69 Giese, Salomon 83, 410 Gill, Christopher 78 Gillet, Lev 12 Gillis, Peter 110–112

486 Ginzburg, Carlo 339, 355, 360 Giovanni da Capestrano, saint 166 Gitelman, Lisa 196 f., 204 Giuliani, Luca 360 Goegebuer, Sibylla 89, 91, 93 f., 99 Goethe, Johann W. 224, 370 Goetinck, Marc 91–93, 95, 103 Goltz, Moritz 125 Goltzius, Hendrick 46 Góngora, Juan J. de 52 Goossens, André 260 Górski, Jakub 167 Gorzny, Willy 272 Gosieniecka, Anna 80 Gotthard von Schaffgotsch 147 Gouwens, Kenneth 74, 76 Gower, George 199, 201, 203 f., 471 Graf, Friedrich W. 186, 216, 305, 464 Graham-Vernon, Deborah 214 Gramatzki, Rolf 156 Green, Rosalie 41, 111 Greenblatt, Stephen 365–372, 381 Gregory I, pope 16 Gregory VII, pope [Hildebrand] 310 Greschat, Martin 215 Grimani, Antonio 120 Grimani, Domenico 117, 119 f. Grindel, Edmund 207 f., 210 Groote, Geert 242, 260 Grosse, Christian 274 Grote, Rolf-Jürgen 156 Groth, Paweł 74 Grotius, Hugo 82 Gruen, Erich S. 78 Gründler, Otto 256 Grünpeck, Johann 44 f. Grzybkowska, Teresa 74, 80 Guicciardini, Lodovico 94, 109 Gwalther, Rudolf 178–181, 183, 460 Habich, Georg 220 Hackett, Helen 204 f., 207, 210 f. Hagenauer, Friedrich 220 Hall, H. Ashley 23 Hall, Marcia B. 100–102 Halsted, David G. 81

Index of persons

Hamling, Tara 215 Han, Herman 63, 66, 403 Handrian VI. 181 Hans I. von Schaffgotsch 144 f., 148 Hans II. von Schaffgotsch 144, 146–148 Hans Schaffgotsch aus Kynast 147 Hans Ulrich von Schaffgotsch 147 Haquin, André 260 Harasimowicz, Jan 14, 34, 61, 65, 73, 81, 144–147, 161 f. Harding, Thomas 206 Harnack, Adolf 346 f. Harris, Steven J. 294 Hase, Karl 303–313 Hasse, Hans Peter 131–134, 136, 139 Hatton, Christopher 202 Haupt, Heinz-Gerhard 176, 303 Headley, John 271 Heemskerck, Maarten van 64 Heer, Friedrich 324, 477 Heffner, Claus 125 Hegel, Georg W.F. 306, 337 Heinlein, Stefan 28 Heller, Thomas C. 365 Helten, Leonhard 123 Henderson, John 93 Hennen, Insa C. 123, 128 Henry VIII, king of England 199, 210, 216 Heraclitus 64, 337, 355 Herbert, Arthur S. 48 Herbst, Magdalena 304 f. Herder, Johann G. 226, 304 308 Herding, Klaus 218 f. Hermanin, Federico 111 Herneisen, Andreas 23, 478 Herold, Michel 49 Heron, Alasdair 236 Herrad of Landsberg, Abbess of Hohenbourg 41 Hesselink, John I. 256 Hester, Carl E. 305 f. Heyden, Jacob van der 80, 274 Heydenreich, Gunnar 128 Higman, Francis M. 233, 236 Hilliard, Nicholas 198 f., 201–203, 205, 467, 470

Index of persons

Hirner, René 28 Hirsch, Brett D. 168 Hodgson, Peter C. 305 Hoefnagel, Joris 200 f. Hoffmann von Fallersleben, August H. 312 Hofman, Rijcklof 242 Hofmann, Hasso 299 Hofmann, Werner 32, 220 Hofmannsthal, Hugo von 358 Holbein, Hans, the Younger 24, 113, 199 Holborn, Annemarie 246 Holborn, Hajo 246 Hölderlin, Friedrich 351 Hollar, Wenzel 115 Holloway, Thomas 213 Hollstein, Friedrich W.H. 32, 173–175 Homer 67, 339, 345, 348 Hopfer, Daniel 21 Hoping, Helmut 242, 271 Hoppál, K. Bulcsú 273 Houszka, Ewa 80 Hrabec, Stanisław 63 Hsia, R. Po-chia 50, 297, 370 Huizinga, Johan 110 Humboldt, Wilhelm von 308 Hünermann, Peter 242, 271 Hus, Jan 15, 33, 45, 133, 213–216, 219, 223 Hutten, Ulrich von 22, 223, 226 Hutton, Richard W. 213 f., 220, 222 Huysmans, Antoinette 94 Ignatius of Loyola 292–295, 300, 330 Ihalainen, Pasi 216 f., 220, 222 Illyricus [Flacius, Matthias] 292 Irenaeus, saint 326 Ittzés, Gábor 271, 273 f., 276 Iwanoyko, Eugeniusz 63, 80 Jackowska, Krystyna 66, 74, 80 Jaeger, Bernd 304 Jaeger, Friedrich 216 Jagiellon´czyk, Kazimierz 61 James I, king of England 211 Jankovics, József 375 Jantzen, Hans 173 f., 188

487 Jarzewicz, Jarosław 161 Jas´niewicz, Aleksandra 73 Jaworski, Tomasz 162 Jenichen, Balthasar 431 Jensen Adams, Ann 82 f. Jewel, John 206 Joan of Arc 351 Jobin, Bernhard 46 Johann Christian, duke of Brieg 81 f. Johann Ernst, count of Nassau-Weilburg 447 Johann Friedrich I. von Sachsen 132 Johann von Münsterberg 145 John Frederick, duke of Württemberg 128 John the Baptist, saint 100, 240, 277 John the Evangelist, saint 27, 29 f., 32 f., 36, 47, 52, 100–102, 119, 126, 219, 323 Johnston, Alexandra F. 195, 198 Jonas, Justus 132–134, 136 Jonck, Jacob Jacobsz 69 Jones, Norman 195 Joseph of Arimathea, saint 101 Julius Caesar 166 Jüngel, Eberhard 318 Juszczak, Dorota 80 Kaenel, Philippe 224 Kaisersberg, Geiler von 251 Kalecin´ski, Marcin 63–65, 69 Kant, Immanuel 304, 306, 358 Karl I. von Münsterberg 144 Karlstadt, Andreas [Bodenstein, Andreas] 16 f., 123 Karmarsch, Karl 223 Kas´ków, Robert 166 f. Kaulbach, Hans-Martin 64 f. Kaz´mierczak, Joanna 27, 29, 34 Kelly, Francis J. 213 Keresztúri, Pál 372 Kewes, Paulina 221 Keyser, Friedrich 225 Keyser, Thomas de 81 Kiełczewski, Wacław 163 Kierkegaard, Søren 319 Kiessling, Gotthar 153 Kiliaan, Cornelius 64

488 King, John N. 200, 208, 211 Kirchhof, Tobias 306 Kizik, Edmund 61, 69, 74 Klemens of Radymno 167 Klint, Paweł 162 f. Klonowic, Sebastian F. 62 f. Kluth, Eckard 33 Knape, Rosemarie 224 Knobloch, Andreas 168 Kobe, Rainer 61, 173, 465 Koepplin, Dieter 34 Koerner, Joseph L. 43, 178 Köhler, Walther 235, 271 Königfeld, Peter 156 Köpf, Ulrich 216, 220, 305 f. Körner, Joseph L. 126 Krauß, Jutta 34 Krehl, August Ludwig Gottlob 131, 135 Krentz, Natalie 124 Kretzschmar, Georg 305 Kreutz, Wilhelm 226 Krieg, Johann 68, 82, 137, 185 Kromer, Marcin 167 Kroon, Marijn de 263 Kropidłowski, Zdzisław 62, 65, 69 Kruse, Joachim 223 Krzenck, Thomas 214 Krzycki, Jan 163 Krzycki, Ludwik 163 Kubistalowa, Irena 162 Kuhle, Gertrud 155 Labuda, Teresa 74, 79 Lagger, Christian 321 Lalouette, Jacques 49 Lambert, Gisèle 45–47 Lambrecht, Mathias 95 Lampognano, Camillo 115 Lampognano, Nicolò 115 Landau, David 28 Lander, Jesse M. 215 Landmesser, Christof 306 Langdon, Gabrielle 75, 79 f. Lange, Axel 224 f. Langewiesche, Dieter 303 Laqueur, Thomas W. 79

Index of persons

Laub, Peter 226 Laurentius, saint 175 Le Goff, Jacques 371 Leclercq, Jean 251 Leeflang, Huigen 46 Leesberg, Marjolein 46 f. Legner, Anton 27, 31 Lehmann, Helmut T. 16, 271 Lemmer, Kondrad 47 Leo X, pope [Medici, Giovanni de’] 34, 117 Leonardo da Vinci 114 f., 422 Lepacka, Anna M. 74 Leppin, Volker 216, 303 Lessing, Gotthold E. 279 Lietzmann, Hans 257 Limentani Virdis, Caterina 114 f., 118 f. Lincicum, David 306 Link, Christian 248 Lipin´ska, Aleksandra 162 Lispius, Justus 82 Lobelle-Caluwé, Hilde 90–93, 95, 103 Locke, John 217 Loda, Angelo 40, 45, 49, 53–55 Logemann, Cornelia 218 Londerseel, Jan van 173–175, 177 f., 181, 183–190, 458, 463 Long, Anthony A. 78 Łos´, Jan 167 Lubac, Henri de 265 Lück, Heiner 123 Lucretius 338, 371 Lufft, Hans 44, 125, 128, 428 Lugo, Juan de 299 Luijten, Ger 47 Lukács, György 347 Luke the Evangelist, saint 27, 35, 79 Lukehart, Peter M. 101 Luther, Martin 15–24, 32–35, 43–45, 75, 96, 126–129, 131–140, 144, 158, 162, 168, 178 f., 181 f., 191, 213, 215 f., 223–226, 235 f., 241, 244, 247–249, 251–253, 257, 259 f., 263, 271 f., 279, 282 f., 286, 296, 303, 306–308, 310–312, 317–322, 326 f., 330, 342, 397, 459, 478 Lutz, Samuel 235, 317, 323, 325, 330

Index of persons

MacCulloch, Diarmaid 109, 208 MacDonald, Michael 365 Machiavelli, Niccolò 84 Macola, Novella 119 Magdalena von Schaffgotsch 147 Magdalena von Zedlitz 147 Mahsman, David 123 Maillet, Bernard 173 f., 188 Maldavsky, Aliocha 294 Mâle, Émile 40, 50 Malinowski, Jerzy 74, 80, 365 Małkus, Marta 161–163, 457 Mallery, Karel van 63 Mander, Karel van 46, 396 Mandreoli, Fabrizio 317 f., 323, 335 Mane, Perrine 41 Mann, Paul 351 Mann, Thomas 351 Manschreck, Clyde L. 282 Mansour, Opher 102 Marcion of Sinope 353 Marcourt, Antoine 239 Marcus, George E. 203, 277, 370 Marechal, Dominique 103 Maréchal, Griet 91 f. Margaretha von Hochberg 144 Margerie, Bertrand de 300 Maria, duchess of Braunschweig-Wolfenbüttel 156 Maria, Polyxena, von Leiningen-Westerburg 447 Markus, Robert A. 237 Marlier, Georges 110, 114 Marlowe, Christopher 366, 368 Maron, Gottfried 298 Marschler, Thomas 318 Marshall, Peter 195 Martin, Emily 371 Martin, John 83 f., 365 Marx, Harald 33 Mary I, queen of England 195, 198 Mary Magdalene, saint 101 f. Masaccio [Tommaso di Giovanni di Simone Cassai] 10, 387 Master, Rohan 386 Matthew the Evangelist, saint 27

489 Mauss, Marcel 371 Maximilian I, Holy Roman emperor 75 Mazurczak, Urszula M. 165 McClendon, Muriel 365 McCullough, Peter E. 211 McDonnell, Kilian 237, 262 McKee, Elsie A. 236 McNamee, Maurice B. 51 McNeill, John T. 240 Medici, Cosimo de’ 118 Medici, Giovanni de’ see Leo X, pope Meding, Wichmann von 224 f. Melanchthon, Philip 19, 24, 76, 126 f., 129, 132–134, 136–139, 158, 213, 216, 220, 223, 253, 271 f., 274–282, 286 f., 394 Melion, Walter 235 Melloni, Alberto 19, 24, 299, 331 Meloni, Federica 9 Memling, Hans 91, 97, 99 f., 103, 415 Menz, Balthasar 124 Merian, Matthäus 68 Metsys, Quentin 109–120, 418–421, 423– 425 Meur, Diane 340 Meyenburg, Michael 24, 136, 435 Michalska, Anna 161, 166 Michalski, Sergiusz 63–65 Michiel, Marcantonio 81, 115 Mielnik, Magdalena 61 Miereveldt, Michiel Jansz 81 Migne, Jacques-Paul 245, 256 Mignot, Claude 49 Millet, Olivier 236 Milwitz, Bartholomäus 68, 404 Mirus, Martin 272–276, 281–286 Moeller, Bernd 223 Moffitt, John F. 114 Möhler, Johann A. 305 f. Moisan-Jabłon´ska, Krystyna 165 Moler, Bastian 125 Möller, Anton, the Elder 63, 66, 69, 73, 402 f., 406 f. Monogrammist AA 75 Monogrammist MS 32 f., 35, 389 f. Montaigne, Michel de 337, 341, 348, 359, 374

490

Index of persons

Moore, Henrietta L. 371 More, Thomas 110–113, 116, 366, 368 Moreelse, Paulus 81 Morini, Agnès 74, 76 f. Moritz, Hugo 162 f. Morrison, Karl F. 343 Moxey, Keith 109 Mrozowski, Przemysław 80 Müller, Frank 43–45 Muller Frank 178 Müller, Gerhard L. 305, 318 Müller, Michael G. 62 Münch, Paul 224 Musculus, Andreas 272, 274–276, 278– 280, 282 f., 286 N. N. 213 Nadal, Jerónimo 291, 293–295, 298 f. Nádasi, Jan 298 Narváez, Carme 51 Narvaja, José L. 318, 323 Nazzi, Laura 119 Neagley, Linda E. 43 Neter, Laurence 83, 411 Neuser, Wilhelm 248 Newman, Jane O. 336, 347 Newman, John H. 321 Niccoli, Ottavia 21 Nichilo, Mauro de 76 Nichols, Francis M. 111 Nicolau, Michael 291, 298 Nielsen, Niels C., Jr. 318 Niesel, Wilhelm 236 Nirenberg, David 43 Nolte, Karl 134 f. Norton, Thomas 200, 366, 371 Nowak, Zbigniew 78 Nowell, Alexander 205 Nuovo, Victor 217 Nyerges, Judit 374 Oberman, Heiko A. 253 O’Donoghue, Freeman M. Oecolampadius, Johannes Oexle, Otto G. 24 Ohst, Martin 214

214 239

O’Malley, John W. 291–296, 300, 317 O’Meara, Thomas F. 317 Omilanowska, Małgorzata 80 Oost, Jacob van, the Elder 99–103, 414–417 Oost, Jacob van, the Younger 101 f., 415 Opalin´ski, Piotr 163 Opitz, Martin 73, 80–84 Opitz, Peter 303 Ortega y Gasset, José 351 Ortmann, Volkmar 303 Orzeszkowski, Fabian 168 Ossowski, Marcin 63 f. Otto, Maria 67, 74 Ovid 75 Oy-Marra, Elisabeth 218 Ozment, Steven E. 253 Ozouf, Mona 218 Padberg, John W. 291, 300 Panareo, Salvatore 76 Pan´czak, Alojzy 162 f. Panderen, Egbert van 165 Pannier, Franc¸ois 54, 134 Panofsky, Erwin 112 f., 115, 341 Parshall, Peter W. 28 Paschasius, saint 237 Paschini, Pio 119 Pasolini, Alessandra 52 Passe, Crispijn de, the Elder 64 Paul, saint 45 f., 111, 250, 277, 298, 320, 338, 350, 352–354, 359 Paul IV, pope [Carafa, Carlo] 76 Pazzi, Maria M. de’ 55 Pelikan, Jaroslav 16, 146, 271 Pencz, Georg 34, 46, 392 Perkins, William 210, 372, 376 Pesch, Otto H. 217 Peterle, Michael 46 Petri, Gottfried E. 14, 225, 274 Pettegree, Andrew 233 Pflacher, Moses 272–274, 276, 281, 283 Phillips, Margaret M. 111 Picasso, Pablo 360 Pickenoy, Nicolaes Eliaszoon 81 Pierguidi, Stefano 55 Plato 258 f., 274, 277, 321, 344, 357

491

Index of persons

Podestà, Gian L. 324 Pohl, Michael J. 238 Pokrzywnicki, Jacek 74 Poliakov, Leon 166 Pommaret, Françoise 54 Ponin´ska, Katarzyna 165 Pontius Pilate 165 Pontormo, Jacopo 75, 118 Popma, Alardo de 55 Pore˛bski, Łukasz 165 Porter, Roy 371 Poscharsky, Peter 129 Post, Regnerus R. 234, 260, 365 Preuss, Hans 62 Prieto, Melchor 51, 55 Prodi, Paolo 331 Przywara, Erich 317–323, 325–327, 330– 332 Pseudo-Dionysius the Areopagite 321 Pszczòłkowska, Lidia 77–79 Pulzone, Scipione 102 Punday, Daniel 372 Purc-Ste˛pniak, Beata 66, 68 Puyvelde, Leo van 114, 116 Radomicki, Hieronim 163 Raitt, Jill 256 Raleigh, Walter 367 Ramallo Asensio, Germán 56 Ranke, Leopold von 304, 308, 311 Raschzok, Klaus 152 Ratajewska, Barbara 162 Rathjen, Jörg 155 Ratramnus 237 f. Ravesteyn, Jan van 81 Reich, Ruedi 245 Reichardt, Rolf 134, 218 f., 224 Reinhard, Wolfgang 297 Reinle, Adolf 79 Reiß, Ansgar 33 Renaudet, Augustin 117 Reuss, Eduard W.E. 236 Reymond, Bernard 22 Rhau, Georg 125, 128, 429 Rhegius, Urbanus 34, 391 Riario, Raffaello 117

Ribalta, Francisco 54, 401 Richards, Sarah 224 Richter, Christian 397 Ripa, Cesare 218 Robson, Mark 368 Roch, saint 100 Rochais, Henri 251 Rocheblave-Spenlé, Anne-Marie 367 Rogers, Mary 80 Rohde, Uta 153 Rohls, Jan 217 Roncaglia, Aurelio 347–350 Rörer, Georg 134 Rosenberg, Alfred 321 Rößler, Michael 428 Rottermund, Andrzej 80 Röttinger, Heinrich 32 Roussel, Bernard 18 Royannez, Marcel 243 Rubens, Peter P. 55 Rublev, Andrei 12, 475 Rudolf II, Holy Roman emperor 46 Ruggieri, Giuseppe 331 Ruggiero, Fabio 317, 335 Ruh, Kurt 82, 135, 244 Rühel, Konrad 125 Rupiewicz, Romana 165 f. Rüther, Heinrich 155 Ruusbroec, Jan van 242 Ryckaert, Marc 95, 97, 100 Ryley, Charles R. 213 f., 223 Ryrie, Alec 215 f. Sachs, Hans 32, 34, 45 f., 389, 392 f. Said, Edward W. 336–340, 343 f., 351, 354 f., 359 Saint-Simon, Louis de Rouvroy, duke of 341 Salomea von Nimptsch 144 Samsonowicz, Henryk 61 f. Sanders, Nicholas 206, 210 Sanders, Todd 371 Sansovino, Francesco 119 Santacroce, Antonio 163 Sarpi, Paolo 292 Saubach, Nikolaus 241

492 Sauer, Hermann 317–319 Savage, Ruth 217 Savonarola, Girolamo 15, 251 Scharfe, Martin 226 Schelling, Friedrich 304, 306 Schiller, Gertrud 43 Schilling, Heinz 81, 140, 297, 303 f. Schleier, Reinhart 64 f. Schmelzer, Steffan 125 Schmidt, Georg 214, 216 Schneider, Burkhart 300, 390 Schnitger, Arp 159 Scholder, Klaus 305 f. Scholem, Gershom 353 Schön, Erhard 45 Schramm, Christoph 125 Schreiner, Ludwig 173–175, 181, 185 Schuchardt, Günter 34 Schuckman, Christian 46 Schulte Herbrüggen, Hubertus 111, 215 Schulze, Ingrid 35, 132, 136, 138 Schumann, Valentin 44 Schuster, Peter-Klaus 220 Schwartz, Regina 209 Schwarz, Friedrich 73, 80 Schwenckfeld, Kaspar von 128, 431 Schweppenhäuser, Hermann 355 Schwöbel, Christoph 216 Scribner, Robert W. 28, 32 f., 43–45, 370 f. Sebastian, saint 62, 100, 125 Secker, Hans F. 80 Seeberg, Reinhold 251 Seemann, Hellmut T. 129, 191, 214 Sehling, Emil 157 Seib, Gerhard 226 Seidel-Grzesin´ska, Agnieszka 161 Seidel Menchi, Silvana 18, 117 Selderhuis, Herman J. 24, 248, 256 Selfisch, Samuel 125 Seneca 82, 274 Sequeri, Pier A. 318 f. Sergi, Giuseppe 9, 15 Sewell, William H. 371 Seyderhelm, Bettina 30, 34, 134 Sforza Pallavicino, Pietro 292 Shakespeare, William 366, 368, 371

Index of persons

Shankman, Paul 369 Shearman, John K.G. 119 Shephard, Rupert 80 Shestov, Lev I. 343 Sidney, Phillip 205 Sigismund III, king of Poland 163 Silesius, Angelus 351 Silver, Larry 110–112, 115 f., 118 Simenon, Georges 351 Skarga, Piotr 167 Skolimowska, Anna 69 Skorka, Abraham 331 f. Slenczka, Notger 306 S´miglecki, Marcin 167 Smirke, Robert 213 f., 222 f. Smith, Jeffrey C. 164 Snigula, Christopher 216 Sosna, Marton 365 Spadaro, Antonio 332 Spangenberg, Ernst 157 f. Sparn, Walter 216 Specker, Melchior 272 f., 278–282, 284, 286 Speelman, Herman A. 233, 238, 246, 265 Spenser, Edmund 202–204, 210, 366, 368 Speymann, Johann 67 Stam, Frans P. van 252 Stange, Carl 146, 271 Starkey, Kathryn 47 Starkie, Andrew 221 Stechinelli, Francesco M. [Capellini, Francesco M.] 154, 447 Stefani, Piero 332 Stendhal [Beyle, Marie-Henri] 341 Steyaert, John W. 93 Stirm, Margarete 18 Stow, James 213 f. Stranieri, Giovanni 74, 76 Strauss, Walter L. 32–34, 42 Stravinsky, Igor 360 Strech, Annette 64 Strobel, Bartholomeus 80–83, 409 Strong, Roy 118, 197–201, 203–206, 211 Sureda, Joan 51 Szo˝nyi, István N. 376 Szydłowiecka, Krystyna 145

493

Index of persons

Szyman´ska, Kamila

162 f.

Talbierska, Jolanta 66 Tallon, Alain 18 Tanner, Klaus 303, 308 Tanner, Mathias 297 Tarnowiecki, Mikołaj 163 Taubes, Jacob 340, 343 f., 353 Teerlinc, Levina 200 Tertullianus 338 Thieme, Ulrich 191, 214 Thimann, Michael 218 Thomas, Alois 40, 42 f., 45, 47 f., 51 Thomas à Kempis 233 f., 237 f., 240–242, 244–247, 249–251, 253–256, 258–260, 262–264 Thomas Aquinas, saint 255 Thulin, Oskar 134, 139 Tiedemann, Rolf 355 Tielhof, Milja van 61 Tietze-Conrat, Erica 110 Titian [Vecellio, Tiziano] 201 Tittler, Robert 195 Todd, Margo 365, 371 Todesco, Fabio 317, 335 Tolkemitt, Brigitte 28 Tomory, Peter 213 Torbus, Tomasz 80 Torresan, Paolo 110 Tóth, Zsombor 365, 373 f., 376 f. Trapp, Joseph B. 111 Trask, Willard R. 350 f. Treml, Martin 335–337, 339–341, 343, 355, 359 Trens, Manuel 50 Treu, Martin 224 Triest, Antonius 97 f. Troschel, Peter 397 Trueman, Carl R. 215 Truong, Nicolas 371 Tudor-Craig, Pamela 215 Turban´ski, Pius A. 162 f., 165, 168 Tylicki, Jacek 63, 66, 68, 80 f., 83 Ubbiali, Sergio 319 Ulrich von Schaffgotsch

146, 443

Valdés, Juan de 75 Valdés Leal, Juan de 53 Valdivieso, Enrique 53 Valerio, Sebastiano 76, 79 Valk, Thorsten 129 Van de Velde, Carl 94 Van den Berghe, Felix 95 Van den Heuvel, Jozef 95 Van Dijk, Rudolf 242 Van Gülpen, Ilonka 226 Van Hee, Robrecht 90 Van Herck, Hanne 96 Vandamme, Ludo 97 Vasari, Giorgio 74, 80 Vegetius, Flavius 380 Veldman, Ilja M. 68, 177 Veltri, Giuseppe 372 Venard, Marc 43 Verdeyen, Paul 253 Verheijen, Lucas 258 Verhelst, Germana 95 Vermet, Bernard M. 174, 182, 184–188 Verrocchio, Andrea 74 Vetter, Ewald M. 51, 55 Vialon, Martin 355 Vico, Giambattista 340, 355 Violle, Bernard 48 Virgil 202, 355 Visscher, Claesz Janszoon 174, 183 Vives, Juan L. 97 Vlach, Michael 335 Vlieghe, Hans 101 Vloberg, Maurice 40 f., 51 Vogel, Bartholomäus 125, 128, 430 Vogtherr, Heinrich, the Elder 44, 178, 460 Vollmer, Hans 223 Voltaire [Arouet, François-Marie] 340 Vos, Marten de 63–65, 165, 180 Vosgerau, Heiko 155 Vredeman de Vries, Hans 65, 175, 182, 184–187, 190, 464 Vredeman de Vries, Paul 175, 182, 184– 188, 190, 464 Vuesels, Philippe 63 Walsby, Malcolm

233

494 Wälzholz, Hannah 376 Wanckel, Matthias 134 Wandel, Lee P. 43, 235 Wang-Toutain, Françoise 54 Warburg, Aby 336 f., 341, 344 Ward, Joseph 365 Warnke, Martin 132 Watt, Tessa 199, 221 Weber, Wolfgang E.J. 188, 303 Weckwerth, Alfred 156 Weigel, Maria L. 19, 21, 213 Weimann, Robert 163 Weiser, Gregor 272–276, 281, 284 f. Welbery, David E. 365 Welsius, Andreas 77–79 Welti, Manfred 74, 76–78 Wendebourg, Dorothea 214 f. Wentzel von Zeidlitz 145 Wenzel, Horst 47, 408 Werner, Elke A. 128, 220, 330 Wette, Wilhelm M.L. de 225 Wex, Reinhold 153 White, Paul W. 198 Whitgift, John 208 Wieland, Christoph M. 226 Wierix, Hieronymus 41, 51 f., 55, 399 Wijaczka, Jacek 61 f. Wilde, Antonius 158 Wilkinson, Alexander 233 Wille, Egon 156, 217, 319 William of Saint-Thierry 242, 253, 258 Williams, Richard L. 215 Winkel, Laurens C. 82, 241

Index of persons

Wirth, Jean 15 Wischmeyer, Johannes 308 Witt, Jann M. 155 Witwin´ska, Magdalena 164 Władysław IV, king of Poland 81 f. Wohlfeil, Rainer 28 Wójcik, Monika 165 Wolffort, Artus 165 Wolgast, Siegfried 82 Wortham, Christopher 168 Woschitz, Karl M. 219 Wyatt, Thomas 366, 368 Wycliffe, John 213–216, 219, 223 Xavier, Francis 296 Xenophon 274 Yates, Frances

200, 202, 204

Zabawa, Barbara 162 Zachhuber, Johannes 306 Zdun´czyk, Aurelia 131 Zechmeister, Martha 318 Zeller, Eduard 305 Ziemba, Antoni 75 Zillessen, Horst 303 Zrínyi, Miklós 380 Zuccaro, Federigo 201, 468 Zurbarán, Francisco 56 Zwingli, Huldrych 24, 44, 76, 179, 182, 223, 225, 235 f., 239, 241, 244, 249, 259, 307, 311 f.

Index of biblical references

Acts 7:59

284

2 Chron 34:28 280 Col 2:8–20 356 1 Cor 2:14 253 1 Cor 12:2 356 1 Cor 15:20 281 2 Cor 3:5–6 46 2 Cor 5:6 242 2 Cor 5:18–21 320 2 Cor 8:9 320 Deut 32:50

280

Eph 1:20–3 356 Eph 2:11–18 324 Eph 4:10 326 Eph 4:17–19 356 Eph 6:17 180 Ezek 34 29, 33 Ezek 34:2–25 30 Ezek 34:23 35 Gal 2:20 244 Gal 4:3 356 Gal 6:16 328 Gen 1:26 284 Gen 2:21–2 145 Gen 3:2–3 145 Gen 3:6–7 145 Gen 4:10 279 Gen 15:15 280, 284 Gen 18 12

Gen 25:8 280, 284 Gen 25:17 280 Gen 26:24–5 286 Gen 35:29 280 Gen 49:33 280 Heb 9:14 47 Heb 11:13 22 Heb 11:37–40 283 Heb 13:12 325 Iob 19:25–6 148 Isa 1:2–6 329 Isa 6:1–2 44 Isa 63:1–3 41 Isa 63:3 43 Isa 63:5 43 Jas 1:12–13 53 Jer 10:21 34 Jer 12:11 53 1 John 3:2 356 John 1:18 327 John 6:56 243 John 10 33 John 10:1–12 28 John 10:1–18 27 John 10:9 29, 52 John 10:11 29 John 10:16 36 John 14:6 53 Jude 14–15 282

496 Luke 2:29–32 324 Luke 2:34 328 Luke 4:16–19 324 Luke 7:11 146 Luke 11:36 79 Luke 15:3–7 27 Luke 16:22 279, 284 f. Luke 19:40 35 Luke 23:43 284f. Matt 10:28 284 f. Matt 11:28 254 Matt 17:3 285 Matt 18:12–14 27 Matt 20:16 139 Matt 22:31–2 285 Matt 22:32 284 Matt 25 29 Matt 27:50–3 280 Matt 28:18–20 128, 138 Num 13:17–24 40 Num 20:26 280 Phil 1:21 148 Phil 1:23 284 f. Phil 2:5–10 320 Ps 6:9–10 282

Index of biblical references

Ps 8 16 Ps 16:10 282 Ps 16:11 281 Ps 19 55 Ps 31:6 284 Ps 82:1 205 Rev 3:20 242 Rev 6 282 Rev 6:9–10 285 Rev 7:14 47 Rev 14:18–20 45 Rev 14:19 41 Rev 19:15 41 Rev 20 282 Rom 8:20 356 Rom 8:22 357 Rom 10:13–14 135 Rom 10:17 135 Rom 11:11–14 329 Rom 11:11–15 328 Rom 11:32 329 Rom 14:8 148 1 Sam 17:34–7 Zech 3:12

47

31